24 Weeks of Bond: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Art by James(?) Talbot

I’m a big fan of James Bond, have been since I was a kid. Having recently repurchased the complete Criterion collection of all 24 films, I thought I would do a rewatch of them all and break them down a bit, one blog post at a time.

A couple caveats: I have only read a couple of Fleming’s original novels, and so I won’t be doing any direct comparisons of the films to their literary counterparts. I’ll also only be covering the Eon films, so that means no spoofs, spin-offs, and no Never Say Never Again.

Having said that, let’s get into it!

THE MOVIE: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, released in 1969 and directed by Peter R. Hunt who had previously served as a film editor and second unit director on the previous five films. His keen eye for camera cuts and stunning visuals helped earn him the directing job for the first Bond film after Sean Connery announced his retirement from the role. With a screenplay written by Richard Maibaum, OHSS endeavored to take a more realistic, less gadget-heavy approach. It also more adheres to the novel source material more closely than the previous adaptations.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of the criminal organization SPECTRE, holds the world captive by threatening to introduce weaponized chemicals to destroy or render impotent major countries’ food supplies. Meanwhile, James Bond meets a beautiful but distressed young woman. In the course of saving her life, he finds himself with leads pointing toward SPECTRE.

This was the longest Bond film until Casino Royale was released thirteen films and 37 years later.

THE BOND: George Lazenby, in his first and only appearance as Agent 007, following Sean Connery’s five turns in the role. Connery announced his intent to retire during the filming of You Only Live Twice, and the studio planned to keep the franchise rolling by casting Roger Moore in an adaptation of a different Fleming novel. However, filming rights fell through with the location they needed and Moore signed on for another season of The Saint. With Moore occupied, they turned to Australian actor Lazenby.

So impressed by Lazenby’s physicality in addition to his look and film presence, the studio offered him a 7 picture deal. Lazenby, dissuaded by his agent, chose to turn the deal down and only do the single film.

Lazenby’s Bond is perfectly serviceable. He plays the agent as determined, stubborn, and cold, all qualities of Bond the way Fleming created him. There is quite a loss of charm from Connery’s portrayal, but it’s made up more in Lazenby’s dangerous aura.

Lazenby is the youngest actor to have played Bond. His “shooting down the barrel” sequence is also the only one where Bond drops to a knee, and the only one where Bond becomes obscured by the falling blood.

THE GIRLS: Blofeld, in an attempt to infiltrate the world’s markets so he can deploy his chemical weapons to their maximum effect, uses hypnotic suggestion to get 12 women, his “Angels of Death”, to do his bidding.

Two of these women have slightly more than nothing to do on screen. Ruby Bartlett (Angela Scoular) and Nancy (Catherine Von Schell) are seduced in rapid order by an undercover Bond who uses the moments of intimacy to try and reveal information about Blofeld’s plan.

Much more important to the plot is Teresa Di Vicenzo (played with tremendous charisma by Diana Rigg, who, at that time, had become well known as the secret agent Emma Peel in Britain’s The Avengers television show; she would go on to play another unforgettable role in Game of Thrones’ Queen of Thorns, Olenna Tyrell). Bond first sees Teresa when she tries to drown herself in the sea. He rescues her, then rescues her again moments later from men trying to kill her, and it isn’t long before he finds out there is much more to her than first appears.

As the daughter of the leader of an European crime syndicate, she is headstrong, deadly, and adventurous, even in the face of danger. She makes a good match for Bond, so much that he may even consider settling down.

THE VILLAINS: Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the major villain, and a tremendously active one, feeling like a culmination of his growing presence to this point. In Dr. No, you only heard of his criminal organization (SPECTRE). In From Russia With Love, you see him dealing with a pair of SPECTRE agents with competing schemes to kill Bond. After a break from him in Goldfinger, you see him addressing a whole room of subordinates in Thunderball. In You Only Live Live Twice, we finally see his face (played by Donald Pleasance at the time), and though he did attempt to kill Bond, most of his screentime was spent in a chair commanding others to do his dirty work.

In OHMSS Blofeld–played by Telly Savalas coming off a fantastic job in The Dirty Dozen– is a proactive, frontline participant in trying to kill Bond. Everything from his imposing physical presence to his dark, casual clothing serves to create a fearsome persona as opposed to the cautious, delegating, hands-free version the previous films seemed to portray. Here, he is fearless, aggressive, ruthless, and unshakeable. Salvalas does a terrific job in portraying a nemesis for Bond who feels like his equal at least in every way.

In smaller roles are Yuri Borienko as Blofeld’s bodyguard Grunther (Lazenby accidentally broke his nose during the audition, which helped Lazenby land the role as Bond), and Ilse Steppat as Blofeld’s henchwoman Irma Bunt. Steppat would unfortunately pass away just days after the film’s release.

Lastly, Gabriele Ferzetti plays Teresa di Vicenzo’s father Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the criminal organization Union Corse. He is undoubtedly a criminal with ulterior motives, but he also has a weird fixation on hooking up Bond with his daughter.

THE LOCATIONS: Portugal bookends the film, with a beautiful and thrilling beach scene at the beginning and a tragic scene in the mountains at the end. The meat of the film takes place in Switzerland, centered around Blofeld’s snowy alpine base. They make the most of the wintry environment with both lingering and sweeping views of Switzerland’s snowy majesty. They also get creative with their action sequences, using terrifying avalanches, prolonged ski chases (a little too long, if we’re being honest), and a genuinely thrilling bobsleigh chase, which sounds ridiculous, but includes a gunfight, crashes, and leaping to and from the sleighs.

THE CARS: There are a number of beautiful cars in this film, including a few different Rolls-Royces. There is a 1954 black Phantom IV, a 1962 Silver Cloud III Standard Steel Saloon, and a 1968 Silver Shadow Drophead Coupe. There’s a blink-and-you’ll miss it 1962 Jaguar Mk X and a 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Convertible.

Mercedes-Benz has a couple cars in important scenes and chases, and then Bond, of course, has an Aston Martin. This time it’s a 1968 DBS Vantage 5234/R.

You can find a full list of the cars shown in the film here.

THE GADGETS: As I said above, it was the intent for this film to rely less on gadgets than any of the previous films. To that end, the most outrageous piece of equipment might be the radioactive lint that is suggested as a form of tracking device. Other than that there is art only an improvised device Bond makes to open a locked door, and the vanity cases Blofeld hands out to his Angels of Death so he can continue his hypnotic suggestions as he carries out his bioterrorist plot.

THE MUSIC: The soundtrack shows a mixture of old and new from composer John Barry. It is the last of the films to use his classic James Bond theme introduced in Dr. No, for example, and the first that sees an extensive use of synth music and electric guitars, creating a more aggressive sound that has led many to agree is among the best scores in the entire Bond franchise.

Finding it difficult to work the title into the lyrics of a song, Barry instead devised a powerful instrumental for the title sequence, much like the title sequences of the first two films, and then created a separate theme song for the film titled, “We Have All the Time In the World.” The lyrics were written by Hal David (“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”, “I Say a Little Prayer”, “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me”), and sung by Louie Armstrong. It was one of the final recordings Armstrong did before his death.

THE SUPPORT: Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell return as M and Miss Moneypenny respectfully, with the former serving as more of a foil this time around, explicitly refusing to allow Bond to pursue Blofeld, frustrating the agent so much that he even threatens to resign. Desmond Llewelyn makes an appearance as Q as well, though only briefly as his gadgets are kept far away from the film.

Really, Ferzetti’s criminal Draco is the largest support, with the only other solid addition being Bernard Horsfall’s Shaun Campbell, an ill-fated colleague who tries to assist Bond on his Swiss operation.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Because George Lazenby only had one appearance as James Bond, and because it was sandwiched between Connery’s attempted last performance after making the character “his” and Connery’s ACTUAL last performance, OHMSS tends to get overlooked. It’s ironic, because everything about it–its nonreliance on gadgets, its close adherence to the source material, Lazenby’s cold and resourceful 007–makes this the MOST Bond-like film in the entire catalogue. Strong turns from Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas give a chemistry and a credibility both to the “Bond girl” and villain categories, with characters more than a match for Bond. Rigg and Savalas’ acting prowess also helps carry Lazenby’s relative inexperience.

The ski chase is overlong but still exciting, and a shockingly depressing ending provides an unexpected gut punch for those expecting the hero to always eke out a win. This film is exquisitely balanced, and the many fantastic qualities are echoed in several films (Inception, for example), including other Bond films (Spectre in particular pays homage).

Though Lazenby’s Bond might only be a stone in the lake that is the franchise, it was well-sunk.

OTHER BOND BREAKDOWNS:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice

Diamonds Are Forever

Stray Dog Rut

The beginning of the end kicked off in Belize City courtesy of a little cabana bar down by the ocean. The water there wasn’t the crystalline blue you might see in travel advertisements. It was brown and frothy, slapping at the thick plastic barriers that kept it from engulfing the sidewalk just beyond. Not much to look at, really, but I was lost and I was hot and the sign outside the little hut promising cheap beers just spoke to me.
The interior was nicer than I expected. Several low tables spread around a medium-sized room. A short bar off to the right with a handsome black man tending it. He smiled at me, shining teeth standing out. I smiled back. It wasn’t a bad start.
The windows — really just clear plastic stretched over and bolted into wooden frames — were all open, rippling softly in the afternoon breeze. Records hung up on the wall next to the bar, paired with portraits of the reggae artists who recorded them. That same music, easy and relaxing and very Caribbean, played through speakers I couldn’t spot.
At the bar I ordered a bottle of the local beer. There were signs every ten feet throughout the city advertising it, so I figured what the hell? When in Rome. I asked for a shot of one of the local rums as well, and the tender slid a plastic cup full of light gold liquor next to the beer. A small bowl with two salt and two slices of lime followed.
“What, am I supposed to drink this like tequila?” I asked.
“You drink it however you like, my man. It is your drink.” He leaned across the bar and extended his hand. “Rámon.”
I took his hand in my own and shook it. His palm was coarse, callused. He did more work than pour drinks. I liked it.
“Jack,” I said, which was close enough to the truth. “This your place, Rámon?”
“My father’s place. He and I take turns here and on the boat for fishing tours. Do you fish?”
“I do not.”
I held up a finger to pause the conversation and took the shot. It went down smoothly but tasted a little too sweet for me. I left the salt alone but bit into one of the lime slices.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think I’ll stick to the beer.”
Rámon laughed and grinned at me again. I couldn’t tell if it was because he thought I was genuinely funny or he liked me or he was just doing his job. I was a pretty decent. Picking up hints coming the other way? Whole different story. Two more hours and twice as many beers only made the issue fuzzier.
And then the storm hit.
Now, tropical storms aren’t unusual in Belize, and especially not at that time of the year. Blue skies turn to dark gray clouds at a second’s notice. Rain starts pummeling down. Perfectly normal, lasting anywhere from ten minutes to several hours. This storm, while not particularly ruinous, was one of the latter. I helped Rámon close and strap shut the windows; the plastic wraps fluttered violently in the wind but held tight.
“These going to be good?” I asked when we were finished.
“They will hold. Thank you for helping. Next round is on me.”
“Suits me, because I’m not planning on walking out in that shit.”
My idea wasn’t original. Even as I posted back up at the bar, a group of people rushed in looking to escape the rain. There were six of them: four women, two men, all tourists like me. They were too bright-eyed for a place like Belize City. Hadn’t had enough strangers yell at them yet.
It was impossible not to eavesdrop on them when they shuffled up next to me at the bar; if proximity hadn’t been an issue, the decibels would have sufficed. They were American — again like me — and young, though I suspected most of them were able to drink legally back home. They were a diverse group, vacationing down from some college I had never heard of. I raised my beer in a toast.
“Wait ’til we get ours!” one of the young men shouted excitedly. He had a pronounced nose and slicked-back hair. A real partier by the sound of him.
Rámon loaded up a mixture of cocktails and beers for the group. They each took turns tapping my bottle and then filed off to a table in the back corner. One of the girls — blonde curls and full lips — walked backward, her eyes on me.
“Why don’t you come join us?”
“I don’t want to be that creepy older guy crashing the party.”
“You can’t crash the party if you’re invited. You’re American, right?”
“More or less.”
“Well, it’s pouring rain outside and you look lonely, so why don’t you come over and tell us where you’re from?”
“Sure,” I said. “Maybe in a few.”
My beer was empty. What number was this one? One less than was necessary at the very least. I ordered two more.
“Looks like you’ve made new friends, Jack,” Rámon said. He placed the two beers down, one in front of the other.
“I don’t know about all that.”
“Maybe you should take another look.”
I turned around and gave the group another glance. The blonde was staring right back. She crooked a finger. She gave a wink. Rámon might have seemed a mystery, but even a clueless idiot like me could pick up what she was throwing down. I grabbed my beers and headed over.

*****

“Do you want to see a magic trick?”
The words came out of my mouth mumbled, more for myself than the groggy girl nestled in the crook of my arm. The words were habit. A welcoming call to strangers on the street approximately 120 seconds before I hustled them out of some cash.
The room around us moaned in response. I had stayed in worse places, but not many. The chipped turquoise walls sucked the light out of the single exposed bulb on the ceiling. The ceiling itself angled inexplicably downward, creating a hazard for even the average-heighted person. But the girl (Jennifer? Jessica? No, Jennifer.) hadn’t seemed to mind, so neither did I.
“What did you say?” she murmured into my chest.
“Magic trick. You want to see one?”
“Mm. Mmkay.”
She placed her palm equidistant between my nipples and used it to help herself up into a sitting position. I reached down to the floor — there was no room for any kind of nightstand — and snatched up my pack of cigarettes. I tapped one out for myself, then offered her one.
“I thought this was a No Smoking room.”
“It is.”
“Won’t you get fined or something?”
“I don’t care.”
And that was true: I didn’t. It wouldn’t take much for me to get rid of any lingering smoke or smell, but considering how much I had paid for this shithole, I thought just as much about setting the whole bed on fire.
Jennifer took a cig and placed it between her lips. I scooted my ass a bit so I could face her better and then touched the tips of my middle finger and thumb together in front of her cigarette. She looked at my hand, bemused, going a bit cross-eyed in the process. I checked a chuckle.
“You ready?”
She nodded.
“Alright. Presto fucking amazo!”
I snapped and a light purple flame danced at the tip of my thumb. I was disappointed. Outside, in the dark of night, it would have looked beautiful. With the shitty paint job of my hotel room as a backdrop, it came off washed out and muted instead. She gasped all the same, and I used it to light her smoke and my own.
“Blow it out,” I said. When she tried, I willed the flame away. She sat back, any trace of the lethargy she had shown vanished just the same.
“How’d you do that?”
“Trade secret.”
“Butane?”
“Sure.”
“It’s just like the movies!”
*That* made me laugh. “Yeah. Just like it.”
The next couple hours went like that: her asking what kind of things I could do and how. Me politely deflecting. She talked. I listened.
No, I didn’t. Who was I kidding? I was too busy asking myself why I showed her the flame trick in the first place. Was it just out of sheer boredom? Or, even worse, *nostalgia*? It was a blessed relief when she finally lay her head back down, this time on a pillow.
“Goodnight, Jennifer,” I said.
Several long beats of silence passed. She slowly rolled over so her back was facing me.
“Jessica.”
Dammit.
I kept still until I was sure she had fallen asleep, wary that jostling her might provoke a stronger rebuke. My mind wandered, away from the room, away from the country entirely. I found myself missing home. New Orleans. The Big Easy, though I never called it that. Found the nickname insulting, if we’re being honest, to everybody who had to scrape through the days.
I had been one of them once upon a time, back during the best years of my life. Hustling catty-corner to trumpet players crooning for bead-bearing tourists. Keeping track of just how much more money I had to earn for a cheap bowl of gumbo and to kick up the line for permission to keep using the gift. I missed the hot weather, the beautiful women.
I glanced down at Jessica. Belize checked off those last two boxes at least.
But what had happened back home? How did things go so wrong? Now it seemed like everyone I knew was either trying to kill me or were ratting me out to the people trying to kill me. What the hell happened to friendship? Pinky swears used to mean something. Blood pacts used to mean a whole lot more.
“What’s the matter, tiger? Can’t sleep?”
“Uh.”
Jessica’s voice startled me. I hadn’t registered her waking up, and she had spoken in a lower octave with some gravel in it, like she was trying to tell a campfire ghost story. I turned to look at her and she slowly rolled my way until she was laying on her back, only her head turned my direction. Her pupils had dilated so far that I couldn’t make out any other color in her eyes, just two black pits in little white seas.
“What’s the matter, Jacob? You look concerned.”
That voice again. I could feel goosebumps rising.
“It’s Jack,” I said dumbly. “Wait, is this because I called–”
“Your name is Jacob. Or tiger, if we’re feeling frisky.”
And then suddenly something clicked in the back of my mind with all the subtlety of a grenade going off. The words came out of Jessica’s mouth, but it wasn’t her saying them.
“Milo?”
“Ding ding ding!”
Jessica (or her body, anyway) tried to smile. Her lips slowly spread apart, exposing her teeth. Her cheeks retracted. Instead of the inviting expression that hooked me at the cabana bar, I got a rictus grin.
“What the fuck?”
I didn’t mean to, but I could feel myself drawing out each of those words as if I were speaking in slow motion. It had nothing to do with the hinky hoodoo going on in my room; I was just shocked because I had only heard of the spell I was witnessing the results of, and it didn’t work out well the last time someone tried it.
I rolled out of bed and began scrambling for clothes. Pants? Necessary, check. Shirt? Got it. Socks? I’d buy more later. I did a quick pat over my body to make sure I had my wallet and passport, then reached for the door.
“Jake,” Milo croaked through Jessica. “Meet me at the big studio. You know the one. One hour. One hour, tiger.”
I damn near ripped the door from its hinges.
#
There isn’t a cool story behind my discovering magic. No candle-lit basement sacrifices. I didn’t wander into the back room of a Santerían shop and meet a skull-faced death goddess. No blood moon on my birthday; it was a waxing crescent, the week before Thanksgiving. How boring is that?

No, what happened is I was lucky enough to be born with the gift — more people are than you might think — and I stumbled ass-backwards into it about the time I hit puberty. Most with an innate ability to use magic go their whole lives without tapping into it, or they don’t even notice when they do. See, some spells require ingredients to prepare, while others need a clear verbal invocation. Some spells just need intent and the right gesture, but you still have to do it correctly.
My experience was… well, you know how some kids would pretend to telekinetically bring something closer or throw something away? It was basically that, but after getting my ass kicked for wearing a purple windbreaker. Eighth graders are savages.

I remember getting up from the field, mud dropping off the front of me in chunks, mixing with the blood I had spit all over the ground from two split lips. I made a gesture with my arm, awkward because my whole body hurt, where my fingers curled and my wrist turned at an odd angle. The gang of hooligans saw none of it as they walked away, thank God; their laughter would have finished what their fists and feet started. They also didn’t notice the filthy puddle next to them until it rose up and drenched them head to toe.

I ran as fast as I could in the other direction, saving my laughter until I was home.

By the time I got there, though, I had almost talked myself out of being responsible for the splash. The thought persisted anyway, keeping me up late into the night: what if I *had* caused it? The day had been calm. The puddle had been deep but still. I couldn’t come up with any other explanation, so I caved to my ego. I decided I needed to recreate what happened.

That weekend I went back out to the field. The mud had dried but the puddle remained, and I stood still next to it until I was certain no one else would be wandering by. Two straight hours of failure followed as I flailed, gesticulated, and windmilled to no effect. I clenched my jaw and squinted at the water. I tried to project my mind at it.

Nothing. I trotted home, dejected.

I would learn later that I was off base in more ways than one and just had no idea. I was missing intent, for one. For another, my gestures were completely wrong. But my biggest misconception? I thought I had affected the water and tried to do so again. It was actually the *air* around it.

I spent the next month nearly mindless. My schoolwork suffered. I suffered, too, at the hands of the same bullies. In times of boredom or loneliness I would fling my arm out again, always in a different arrangement, but my heart wasn’t in it. By the time the semester ended, I was thinking about what I would need to do to drop out of school without anyone getting on my case. My dad was dead and my ma might as well have been, so it was just the school and the state I had to worry about. Plots and schemes to get aroune them were going through my mind when I heard my name from the front of the class.

My science teacher, Mister Artur Cormier, held my test paper up. Even from the back of the room I could see the fat red F he had drawn in the middle of it. He was saying something about how unbelievably poor I had done, that it must have been deliberate, and then he began to read off some of the answers I had written.

I didn’t hear anything after that. Rage consumed me. My temples pounded. My arms shook. I flung one of them out and muscle memory I didn’t knew I had contorted my limb into the proper gesture. A gust of wind rose up in front of Mister Cormier’s desk, scattering the tests of my classmates and ripping mine from my teacher’s hands.

As the papers floated down to settle on the floor, the classroom was stone silent. Most of the kids had turned to stare at me. A few had turned to look at the windows, which were closed. Sorry, guys. It was me.

I reached down to grab the backpack slumped against the front leg of my desk. I didn’t say anything as I walked out and nobody said anything to me. That was the last time I stepped foot in a classroom.

Instead, I devoted the bulk of my newfound free time to scouring the library and the internet for anything and everything I could find on telekinesis, element manipulation, and — eventually — full-blown motherfucking magic. I read for hours at a time, sifting through nine parts bullshit to find that one part goldmine. I memorized rules and legends from the worlds of magic and visited every hoodoo, voodoo, and black crafts store in the city. I discovered new spells and practiced the ways to move my body so I could cast them. All of this I did alone, mostly in secret. It was a lot like masturbation, sure, but more fun and informative.

I learned, for example, that air magic was the most accessible for beginners because air is all around us. I branched out from there into related magics and then sub-branches of *those*. That’s how I discovered illusory crafts. My first love, the one that pulled me fully away from the tatters of my old life and moved me into my new one.

If you head into any city with a lot of foot traffic, you’re bound to find a hustler or two working a crowd. ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ is an expression for a reason. It isn’t always stupid people that fall for it, either: there are a healthy amount of bright, brilliant people that believe they simply *can’t be tricked*. Their wit and observation is greater than your petty sleight of hand. Your base deception. Sometimes they’re even right! But most times, people can’t outfox a hungry thief with thousands of hours of practice.

So I bought a half a dozen decks of cards with money I pilfered from my ma while she was on one of her benders. I got a bag of marbles and some red plastic cups. I practiced. I got good, *really* fucking good. Then I tossed some magic in the mix.

First it was basic illusion work. You’re looking for a Queen of Hearts, but suddenly it looks like a Ten of Clubs. You think you saw the marble roll under the left cup, but did it really ever move at all? From there, I graduated to full on displacement magic and moved the card or the marble wherever the hell I wanted it.

Sleight of hand stacks the deck against you. Magic yanks the carpet out from under your feet. I left school when I was 13 years old. I left home three weeks before my 15th birthday. I celebrated Christmas that year by tricking nearly three grand out of drunk tourists with no sense and no better place to be.

Weeks passed, then months, then years. The money was good but seemed to disappear just as quickly as I made it. Fancy meals, designer clothes. Nice hotel rooms when I didn’t feel like camping outside somewhere, tucked away just off the street, in an alley that smelled like spoiled milk. It sounds bad, but even that had its charms. There was a three-circle Venn diagram I found myself a part of: the street people, the street hustlers, and the street practitioners. All of them had a magic about them in some way, and they became the family I had lost when my father passed.

I narrowed my studies to refine my craft. I was no wizard or warlock, no sorcerer. I wasn’t a magician with a pretty assistant and a collapsing rod or a hat with a bunny in it. I was a young man with a gift and a vagabond life. I was a grifter guru and, “You want to see a magic trick?” was my mantra.

“You want to see a magic trick?” And people did. And they put their money on the belief they could outwit me. And I twitched the right fingers, turned the right palm, put the right feeling into it and came away richer for it. Things were good.

Then, for better and worse, Milo came along.

I was still learning what it meant to be a man with the gift in Louisiana. I had learned a lot but knew next to nothing. So, eighteen months or so before Uncle Twist and Inchpatter dragged me through a bone tunnel, read me the Cold Word, and drew my blood, all I saw was a handsome mark making his way toward my table and me.

Milo had three days’ worth of stubble — the perfect amount — when I first met him. His dirty-blond hair was cut short and messy near the back. A cowlick he could never quite tame. I noticed his gray eyes and enjoyed them, but it was the devil in his smile that I picked up on most.

I should have known then that it was trouble and called it a day right there. I used to have good instincts for that, back when I was getting my ass kicked into my throat three times a week. But I was 20 and I had magic and I had yet to discover my talent for fucking up a good thing.
#
I moved through the Belizean night like a phantom, sticking to shadows where I could and pushing a little magic out for cover when I couldn’t. What scattered lights there were cast a pale orange shroud over the street. I was careful to watch each step, though the ground wasn’t uneven.
In fact, the sidewalks were actually pretty well built, thick concrete squares settled into the sides of the road. It was just that every so often, one of those blocks would be missing completely, leaving a two foot drop into filthy water for the unwary. All matter of gross stuff could be found in those holes: plastic bottles and chip bags, holey socks and dead animals. I saw a condom floating in one; that was enough to convince me to pay attention.
My hotel shrank behind me as I moved and disappeared from sight completely after the first corner I turned. I felt kind of bad about leaving Jessica there, but I didn’t know what Milo would have done to her if I had stuck around. I didn’t even know he could pull off what he did! It was best just to leave and hope she would wake up before checkout to do the same.
The buildings around me leaned in conspiratorially. Unlike the sidewalks, these were crooked and wore their years like a bad suit. Doors had slivers missing from them. Windows were just holes: the glass, the frames, everything was just gone. Where there was paint, it was chipped. Hell, the buildings themselves were chipped and crumbling.
In the daytime, there would at least be a little life in the area, people sitting on steps, blaring music from their yards, walking to and from work or school. It might not always be fun in Belize City, but it was certainly busy. The quiet and empty streets now were, dare I say it, spooky. I felt like I was about to be mugged.
As if sensing my fear, a small figure darted out from behind a car on my right, and I nearly shat myself. I reeled backwards into some kind of shoddy fence, not wanting to fight but ready if I needed to. Which confused the sad-looking mutt standing in the middle of the road.
“Oh,” I said. “Hey. What’s up, dude?”
He cocked his head at me and then trotted back in the direction I had come from. A half dozen vehicles back, he tucked himself under the bed of a truck and lay down. Stray dogs were rampant in this city, drinking out of gutters and picking through garbage. I would feel worse about it if I hadn’t felt so much like a stray myself lately.
“He scare you, white boy?” asked a voice from behind me.
“Jesus fuck!”
I whirled around. The fence I had been propped against was a horrendous alternating mix of chain link and slats of corrugated metal. A man with skin like charcoal stood on the other side in an empty lot, looking at me through the links. His hair was draped over his shoulders in two long gray dreads. He gave me a gap-toothed grin.
“So now what is scarier? The dog? Or me?”
“You, old man. What the fuck?”
“Someone who smells the way you do should be careful of the language they use.”
“I just had sex, that what you smell? Why don’t you mind your own business?”
The man laughed at me. It sounded like a wheeze and held no mirth as far as I could tell. He pointed a gnarled finger at me. “You people, you are halfway to an animal.”
I didn’t know if he meant white people or Americans, but it didn’t matter. “That’s rude,” I said. “But true. I never had to flip off a child for aggressively panhandling before I came down here, though.”
“And you were a good child?”
“I wasn’t bad!” I thought about that for a second. “Grew up to be a bit of a bastard adult, I suppose.”
The old man wheezed again. “That must be why you smell, then. Not sex, boy, but, like bad magic.”
“That ain’t me,” I said, trying to ignore the chill in my blood. “I don’t *do* bad magic.”
“You just the type that dance near it.”
“Not if I can fuckin’ help it.”
“But you can’t help it, can you?”
I bit the inside of my cheek while I tried to come up with a good answer. None came to me. “Apparently not.”
“Get on, then. And after you do what you are set to do, maybe you leave the city.”
“Maybe.” I started to turn away, but one last thing was bugging me. “Hey, you scary old dick. What’s this trashy fence even for? Of all the eyesores in this city, this monstrosity circling nothing might be the worst. What was here before?”
“This place?” He grinned at me again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Was a house. Not for everybody, only a few. It was a place for the in-between.”
“What, like ghosts?”
“Meaner.”
“Meaner than ghosts. Alright.”
“Twenty years ago, just about, two men come. White, like you. Stink of bad magic. Like you. They tear the house down. Then they leave, but you people? You are not very smart. The building? Gone. The power remains. This fence, it is a warning, not an obstacle: stay out or you might catch the Bad Wind.”
It was like every thing he said found a new way to creep me out. “You know, I don’t really like it here.”
“What a coincidence. We don’t really like you here, either.”
“Yeah, fair enough.”
That was enough of that. I left the man and his lot behind, feeling no better but suddenly clear on one thing: I wasn’t skipping town. Not yet. When I had left the hotel, it was to try and keep Jessica out of the line of fire, but actually going to meet Milo had been up in the air. If I really whiffed of bad magic the way the old man said, though, I needed to address the issue. I had already let it go three years since Milo put me in the shit the first time.
Belize City was never going to be home to me, but I had got to know it pretty well. It was my routine any time I wound up in a new place to walk around as much as possible, no matter how many people offered a taxi ride by yelling at me. You get a better feel of the culture by walking, and the people, and you get a passing familiarity for the layout of the streets which could really help out in a pinch. That’s how I knew which turns to make and roads to follow to get to the studio Milo mentioned. Yeah, I did know which studio he meant.
After all, it was my favorite building in the city.
The studio had seen better days. Not a single one of the windows — glass set in twenty-four gridded slots per frame — had all of their squares intact. A railed staircase running along the side of the building up all three stories was littered with buckets and bags full of trash. A second staircase wrapped around the side and back with no railing for support and wood that looked like it could go at any moment. A third staircase rose directly into the building to the second floor through a hallway painted red. The rest of the building was mostly purple-black, meant to signify outer space, with huge chunks of dirty white wood clawing through like old bones. The painted stars dotting it had faded almost completely away.
I loved it all. The dance studio must have really been something in its heyday.
Now Milo was up in there, waiting. It had been three years since I had last seen him. My friend. My lover. The son of a bitch who used bad magic on a poor girl who just wanted to sleep with a degenerate.
My heart sailed its way up under my Adam’s apple and set anchor.
#
Regulations on magic are kind of a shit show, but they’re something you need to know if you have the gift and plan on using it. Groups band together. Organizations… organize things? Territories create clearly defined boundaries, some with rules and restrictions to moderate magic use, some without. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear Texas is without and that things get more than a little hairy out there among the cacti and casual racism.
Louisiana has the Cold Word, an 150 year old creed scrawled, for some reason, across a preserved sheepskin. I mean, Jesus. But the rules are solid, even smart, and breaking them within Louisiana territory was grounds for consequence up to and including execution. Being cut off from your gift was on the table, too. Some spells could do that, known only to a few, and many considered that to be a punishment worse than death. Once you have access to weird powers, forced normalcy is like getting chemically sterilized.
The only problem with regional restrictions, of course, is that people with the gift are *people*. Outside of the higher-ups in a territory’s regulatory council, nobody gives a shit about catching anyone up on all the Dos and Don’ts. They see someone who can do the same things they can and either want to hang out or have a piss fight.
That’s pretty much why I wasn’t introduced to the concepts of acceptable magic and *bad* magic until I was 22. Milo, a couple years older, was equally oblivious. We had been friends for a year and a half at that point–since he correctly called me out when I tried to game him with the cups and marble–and been a couple for nearly a year. Milo was the first man I ever slept with. He had treated me with patience and respect, and I loved him for it.
As we got to know each other more, the gift became a frequent topic of conversation between us. He wanted to know how my illusory magic worked in detail; I refused him. I demanded he help me branch out in elemental crafts, but the most notable thing he did was arm me with my little purple lighter trick (which, admittedly, I would get a lot of use out of). Typical couple spats.
It was on one of those many evenings we were together–in every sense of the word–that we were rudely interrupted by a sharp rapping at the door. We took our time dressing as a passive-aggressive Fuck You to the knocker, one I would never think to try again with the man at the door knowing what I know now.
Besides his signature wide-brimmed hat, it’s impossible to describe Uncle Twist. Or you’re not supposed to. Or you really can’t, I’m not quite sure. His illusory magic is on an unfathomable level, mostly because it’s literally designed to leave you staggered. I had met a good number of people with the gift on the streets of New Orleans, but none of them began to touch the power of the man at my threshold.
“Uh, hi,” I said. The clothes I put on made me feel no less naked.
“May I come in?”
“I mean, sure.” As if there were any other answer.
“My name is Twist, called Uncle Twist by some of the youngers. Are you two…”
“Together?” Milo asked. “Yes.”
“That makes this easier. No secrets, and I can cut to the chase: you both have the gift and have been using it for some time without any oversight.” He held up a hand before either of us could say anything. “Don’t worry. I didn’t come here to be an earth-shaker or bear any bad news. Y’all are fine. That said, it has come to my attention that nobody ever ran y’all through the ropes, told you what would fly and what wouldn’t. It’s best for all of us if we fixed that. Does that make sense to you?”
“I… yeah?” I managed.
“There’s an oversight committee?” Milo asked.
Uncle Twist shifted his weight to one leg and put his hands on his hips. “Son, you could start a fucking forest fire with your hands. You don’t think oversight might be a good thing?”
“When you put it that way…”
“Right. You boys from around here?”
“I am,” I said.
“Oregon,” said Milo.
“Alright,” said Twist. “Very good. If you’re planning on using your gift, at least in Louisiana, there are some guidelines you need to follow. So’s I can get an idea of where y’all stand on magic in general, why don’t you tell me exactly what you know already?”
I offered Twist a seat while Milo and I spoke, but he declined and leaned against the wall instead. Still on edge about the intrusion, we did our best to come clean about everything, backtracking and correcting each other when necessary so no detail was left out. We covered our individual discoveries of the gift, our first times using it, my con jobs and Milo’s accidental arson as a teenager. We rattled off the books we read and were reading, the areas we were dabbling in, the areas we wanted to pursue next. Twist just listened, nodding to himself until we were finished. He took his hat off and held it in front of his belt buckle.
“Well, it seems like you boys have a pretty good handle on things. We’re pretty lax on most activity here in Louisiana. There are a couple big things I just want to cover: don’t use flagrant displays of magic in front of people without the gift. Your card and cup tricks seem fine, but setting a car on fire, something like that, that’s not good. Don’t use your gift to kill anyone, accidentally or otherwise. You want to commit murder? Use a gun and don’t tell me about it. Most importantly, absolutely no use of bad magic is tolerated.”
“What the hell is bad magic?” Milo asked.
Twist blinked in surprise. “You ain’t never heard of bad magic? Alright. It’s any type of spell, enchantment, or other kind of general mumbo jumbo that directly affects the control of a person’s body. So no mental intrusions, no possessions. Stay the hell away from any kind of necromancy or post-mortum divination.”
“You can do those things?” Milo asked, eyes wide.
“They’re possible, but you *can’t* do then. That’s my point.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Yeah? Well, alrighty then. Just one last thing.” Twist fished around in his back pocket and came up with a card, which he handed to me. It was the darkest black I had ever seen and completely blank, save for an address printed in maroon. “Meet me there in a couple days, say around five. We’re just going to have you sign a few papers basically covering what we did here. We file every agreement to the Cold Word. Think of it like visiting the customs office when you land in a new country. Easy as pie. Oh, and there is sort of, hm, let’s call it a membership fee for using the gift in Louisiana. We’ll go over that when I see you next.
“Uh, okay,” I said. “Two days.”
“So are you, like, basically the guy who runs Louisiana’s magic department?” Milo asked.
“Oh, I got my bosses, too,” Twist said. He put his hat back on and headed for the door. “People just seem to prefer meeting ol’ Uncle Twist.”
#
I can tell you one thing: signing an accord with the Cold Word was not like going to a fucking customs office. Customs employees don’t meet you in the basement of a butcher shop, for one, nor do they bag your head until you’ve fully entered a secret second basement, then lead you down a tunnel packed with bones for support structures. There aren’t rules written on a piece of dead animal, and they sure as shit don’t cut your arm open and make you sign your name in blood.
That’s how we met Inchpatter for the first time. Uncle Twist described him as one of Louisiana’s enforcers. Break the rules, you might find Inchpatter ringing your bell. It was funny to think about because he didn’t look like much: wiry figure, terrible haircut, and not much more than five feet of length to him. His eyes, though, that’s where he sold you. They were flat, hard. Once, Twist called him “the funniest sumbitch” he knew. I never saw that side of him.
After all the skull and dagger, secret society ritual shit was over, Inchpatter helped us up from our knees. Twist bandaged our arms and handed us a pair of pamphlets.
“That’s basically an FAQ right there. It should clear up any lingering questions you might have.”
Milo slapped his into an empty palm. “Couldn’t you have just handed us this and had us sign the papers, instead of…” He gestured around the room. “The spectacle.”
“Welcome to magic for adults,” Inchpatter deadpanned.
“Christ.”
And that was pretty much the end of it. What had been a terrifying, nearly traumatic hour for Milo and me had been routine for our two companions. They sent us on our way with what basically amounted to well wishes and a pat on the ass.
We took turns showering when we got back to the apartment, then changed each other’s dressings. The cuts were shallow and would heal quickly, but we didn’t want to risk getting any blood on the bedsheets. Then, clean and proper and tucked in, my boyfriend and I went through one of the pamphlets together.
To be fair, it was a lot more than an FAQ. It was actually a pretty handy resource for two young gifted like us. There were lists of magic shops and relevant bookstores. A glossary for magic terms and techniques we had never heard of. Even a two-page spread that went into further detail on what was prohibited under the definition of bad magic.
I hadn’t noticed Milo’s expression when Uncle Twist said those words to us for the the first time. If I had been more observant or less self-absorbed, maybe things wouldn’t have happened the way they did. As it stood, warm in bed, I was oblivious to the fact that even though Milo and I were reading the same pages, we were seeing vastly different things.
#
I stood facing the door to the studio, annoyed. The steps leading to it had all groaned loudly as I walked up them, announcing my arrival as effectively as screaming from the street. I wasn’t sure how much of a point there would have been to sneaking up on Milo, but I had been hoping for at least some time to deal with my thoughts and feelings when I saw him.
Still, I had come this far.
The doorknob didn’t fight me when I twisted it, so I stepped inside and closed the door gently behind me. The first thing I noticed about the interior was that the air was *old* despite all the broken windows. It hung in the halls and doorways, full of dust, pressing down on my clothes. I waved a hand in front of my face before taking a breath and hoped there wasn’t asbestos or something similar in it. No magic in the world had figured out cancer yet.
I found a long hall that curved to the right and walked down it carefully, avoiding empty bottles and unidentifiable pieces of scrap metal. Posters advertising dance performances from years ago hung from the walls and littered the floor, faded and tattered. A room — some kind of office — sat on my left. The door was missing and the space was empty except for a desk that leaned heavily to one side.
Everything opened up once I rounded the corner, and I found myself in the massive hexagonal practice room you could make out from the ground. Papers and glass were strewn everywhere. Mats once meant for dancing and tumbling on were stacked in one corner, ripped, their color dulled. At the back of the room, peering out through a shattered window, stood Milo. He waited a few seconds of awkward silence before turning around, but when he saw me, he smiled.
His hair was lighter than I remembered, but his skin was more tan. Signs of good time spent in the sun. He had lost weight and his toned frame spoke to a primal, sexual part of me. The eyes, though, I had a hard time recognizing, and the bags beneath them; they were a little too dark.
“Hey, tiger.”
That’s all it took. Two goddamn words and I found myself traveling through time.
Our first kiss, on the boardwalk after a movie. We had been flirting for some time, but I never would have made the first move. It was dark, and I was looking over his shoulder, admiring the moon on the water. He leaned in and I froze until our lips touched, and then my legs nearly abandoned me completely.
Watching him sleep. The way his mop of dirty-blond hair fell over his eyes and the light snoring that accompanied his deep rest. The way he couldn’t fall asleep unless one foot stuck out from beneath the blankets.
That last vacation we took, just before everything went to shit. The concert in Portland and how everything was so vibrant, how we felt the music in the marrow of our bones, how the lights painted us with colors we didn’t have words for. Not because of magic, but because we bought some ecstasy off some kid that hadn’t showered for three days.
I went on that journey just on the inflection of Milo’s words. Like the concert, no magic was at play. Just the tricks of an aching heart and a whiff of the Good Ol’ Days. Like any good thing, it passed quickly enough.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I said.
“Really, Jacob? Three years and the first thing you say, you call me an asshole?”
“I’d have told you sooner, but I was busy hoping I would never see you again.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
My jaw dropped. “You framed me for *bad magic*! You put a girl in a goddamn coma the last time you tried the trick you pulled tonight. I can’t go home, Milo!”
“You wouldn’t have had to leave at all if you had just trusted me.” He stepped away from the window and held his arms out. I went nowhere near them. “Things were bad for you, sure, but they would have blown over. I was working on a solution. You leaving… complicated things. Considerably. Inchpatter is dead.”
I felt my throat go dry. “How?”
“Several gunshot wounds. A random act of violence as far as anyone’s concerned.”
“Right. And now you’re here to, what, bring me home? Clear my name?”
Milo look confused. “No, I’m here to kill you, Jake. I could have cleared your name years ago, but you didn’t trust me. Me! That torched my heart, tiger. Then you pissed in the ashes when you left me behind.”
“Fuck you! What you did–”
“Nobody has ever hurt me like that,” he interrupted. “But now, now if I bring you back, the council’s investigation ends. Their culprit is dead after being on the lam and any suspicion lingering on the guy that brought him in slowly fades away. Like magic.”
What I was hearing was so unfathomable it might as well have been a different language. I had loved this man, and here we were… here I was. On my own. Of all the things I had imagined for tonight, fearing for my life hadn’t even been on the list. But what else could I have expected once Milo reared his head? Some people find a limit when they break bad and retreat from it. Milo had always been too curious for that.
“Speaking of magic, you bring me back reeking of it to Twist and the gang, it’s not going to do you any favors.”
“Did you not hear what I said about Inchpatter?” Milo reached into his pocket and came out with a neat, shiny little revolver.
I’ve had my ass kicked more times than I can count. Had a few knives pulled on me, even got stabbed in the leg once. This was the first time I had ever had a gun pulled on me. A small voice in the back of my head was telling me that of course it was going to be someone I knew, someone I cared about. You spend your life cheating people, you’re going to wind up on the wrong end of a bad play.
The thing is, I had spent three years being persona non grata in the only home I had ever really known. I had been drinking my way through cheap bars and fucking my way through cheap hotels, but my head was always on a swivel. You don’t spend that kind of time being hunted by others and not learn a few things. Everyone thought I cast bad magic? Well, I didn’t, but I could still get a little dirty if I had to.
“If that’s how things are,” I said, “can you at least answer a question for me? It’s been eating me up.”
“Of course, Jake. As long as you know how this is still going to end.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve made that clear. I just want to know… you want to see a magic trick?”
I was almost too cheeky for my own good. I saw Milo’s eyes tighten, concerned, and I saw him raise the gun to fire. I had been working my spell while I was talking, though, and I came out just ahead.
My air magic had improved considerably since my middle school days. Though the effort took a lot out of me, notably in my shoulders and the square of my back, I was able to use the thick air in the studio to raise and hurtle the mats from the corner to the space before me. Milo’s gun roared. A sound somewhere between a rip and a thud came from the mats and I was quite relieved to not be dead.
My next move was even trickier as I cast two spells nearly simultaneously. I snapped my fingers and brought up the purple flame on my thumb. A swift gesture and a hard blow on the fire essentially turned it into a flamethrower, lighting the mats ablaze. Immediately after, I brought the tips of my fingers into my palms and thrust my arms out in front or me; a gust of wind pushed the thick, flaming mats and sent them flying in Milo’s direction. He fired again, again to no effect.
Those weren’t easy spells to cast. They required physical energy and a certain level of precision that had never been my forte. I had taught myself the basics but hadn’t had much opportunity to practice them. I was proud to have pulled them off.
That said, I am also kind of an idiot and had not considered the consequences of setting a fire in a condemned wooden building.
The studio *erupted* in flames. I darted back down the hall, around the corner so I wouldn’t be an open target if Milo was still set on shooting me. Smoke spread like ivy, tendrils twisting and wrapping through the room. Though my eyes stung and my tears made it difficult to see (whether I was crying from the smoke or Milo’s newest betrayal was a mystery to me), I peeked around the corner, looking for a glimpse of my former lover.
A glimpse, I got. Milo staggered toward the hall, his arm pressed over his eyes, the gun still in his hand. Then he disappeared as the floor collapsed beneath him.
I turned and ran for the door. Ripped it open. Bolted down the stairs, gulping for air, clean air that felt like barbed wire when it mixed with the smoke and dust in my lungs. I rounded the corner, angling for the ground level entrance, hoping I could still reach Milo. The door was already aflame. Fire belched out through the windows next to it. What little glass had remained in the studio was blowing out and raining down. There was no entry. There was no escape.
My mind was having trouble processing everything that had happened and was happening. The drinks from several hours ago were a distant memory. The sex, with the girl, in the hotel… that was all gone. My favorite building in the city was collapsing in on itself with my favorite person in the world inside. I tried to remind myself that he had framed me, hung me out to dry, and tracked me down just to kill me. I still felt terrible; love is a bitch.
I walked backward, eyes on the inferno, until I reached the sidewalk a safe distance away. It wasn’t long before a sizeable crowd joined me.
“You got a big way of dealing with bad magic, white boy.”
I turned to look over my shoulder. The old man from earlier was standing a few feet behind me, tugging at his dreads. He grinned at me. Some of the teeth that had been missing had miraculously returned. I was exhausted.
“You ain’t going to scare me like you did before, Grandpa.”
“You know the man you met in there?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“But you deal with him anyway. Maybe I misjudged you, boy.”
I turned away from Milo’s funeral pyre to face the old man. I just couldn’t get a handle on the guy. He was slippery, like Uncle Twist, but with airs of a magic I had never encountered before.
“Tell me something,” I said. “Does BelGuatamala territory have any rules against accidentally killing someone with magic?”
“No, boy. Nothing for that.”
“Then I don’t really give a shit what you think of me.”
The old man wheezed his laugh at me. I turned and started walking away, what energy I had left spent pulling the shadows of Belizean night closer to my body. Sirens sounded in the distance. Whatever the fire department managed to save, I knew a healthy chunk of me wouldn’t be included.
As I walked, a runt of a mutt fell in step beside me. Droopy ears, watery eyes, tail tucked down near its legs. I didn’t know what it wanted and I didn’t care. Right then, it was my only friend in the world.

Absolute Zeroes Chapter Three

Prologue
Previous
Chapter Three

Things (Metaphorically, Hopefully) Blow Up
   The Causeways. Rips in space that granted faster-than-light travel to galaxies that had – for millennia – gone undiscovered until the Unveiling. Nearly a thousand years previous, astronomers on Terra Prime and the surrounding colonies looked to the stars in bafflement as black holes around the universe either disappeared entirely or transformed into something… else. Something quite different. These new creations existed as shimmering portals of sorts that defied scientific laws and explanations.

   Panic had set in at first as the news was relayed to the general public. Alarmed, intensive studies followed when nothing else happened immediately. Scientists struggled to figure out what this new development meant in the cosmic sense. Was their galaxy doomed? Was death around the corner?

   And still nothing seemed to change.

   More experiments kicked off. Satellites were sent out to test the gravitational pull around the anomalies. They found no pull at all. More satellites were sent to test for elemental compositions. None of what they found registered on any comprehensible scale. Obviously the next step was to shoot things into it, so rockets with video and recording devices were sent into the tears. They passed through without trouble at first, but as streaks of light seemed to pass by at unfathomable, unceasing speeds, the cameras gradually broke down. The rockets were lost soon after.

   It took decades and billions of dollars to design a machine capable of withstanding the strange energies existing within the rifts. Further and further, the spacecrafts would push through. And then, one day, an unmanned shuttle dubbed Heritage 12 found itself in another galaxy.

   Another thriving, populated galaxy just as confused as Humankind’s own.

   Things moved quickly after that. The Dyr – a race of Humanoids (though they would resent this description) evolved from animals close to those on Terra Prime, and from a homeworld equally similar – were the first to make return contact, reverse-engineering the hardware that allowed travel through the breaches. War broke out soon after, then halted as more races began to arrive, and then war began again.

   For a hundred years, the universe was in conflict as members of several species, all alien to each other, struggled to gain dominance even as they failed to understand their evolving situation. It was unity through ignorance that finally slowed the bloodletting. Dialogue was opened. Resources were exchanged. Slowly, a Council was established.

   Once a relative peace and understanding was established, the richest in resources among them set out to make the Causeways safer to travel through. Massive floating arches were crafted and carefully placed on either side of every breach they could find, to help prevent hapless travelers across the cosmos from flying into one unprepared. Specific ships were fitted with the failsafe technology required to survive passing through. Each race devised their own name for it in an effort to take ownership: Humans called them gate guards; the Dyr called them latchkeys; the Murasai referred to them as sal harnak. The only holdouts were the Ilo Eronites, who were powerful but few in number and had little interest in petty power struggles or naming conventions.

   Soon the vastness of space found itself moderately congested by these black-turned-wormholes. Lines formed, waiting for the arches to flash a confirmation that it was okay to pass through. There had been no documented crashes in a Causeway yet. Nobody knew if it was possible, or what would happen should a collision occur. No one wanted to find out.

   Lines. Flashing green lights. Wait times.

   Behind the pilot’s controls of the Sol Searcher, with Archimedes snoring in the seat behind him, Grey Toliver flashed a rude gesture towards the massive freighter in front of him. “Least slagging favorite part of this slagging job,” he muttered.

   The lights on the arch flashed red, caring not at all about the plight of couriers.
*****
   “Now say ahhh…”

   The little girl on the table opened her mouth wide and followed the instructions loudly and to the letter. She giggled when the depressor hit her tongue, and then winced when it was taken away. Her hand shot up to her throat, rubbing it gently.

   Nimbus patted her young patient on the leg. “You did very well, Fiona. Thank you for being so brave. How does your throat feel? Does it still hurt to swallow?” The girl nodded. “Would you like a citrus drop?”

   Fiona brightened. “Yes! Yes, please!”

   Nimbus smiled and stood. Her bright blue latex gloves came off and tumbled through the air to the trash can. She thumbed a plastic-wrapped lozenge out of a jar on the edge of the sink and handed it to Fiona’s mother to unwrap.

   “It’s a little red back there. Her tonsils are a bit swollen, but I believe it look like a cold right now and not anything more serious. Keep her home from school for a couple more days, stick to cold medicines and cough drops for now. I’m going to prescribe some antibiotics just in case, but don’t pick them up unless she gets worse or she’s not better within a week.”

   “Thank you, Doctor Madasta. Truly. I cannot tell you how much happier we are with you than we were our last physician.”

   “I’m just happy you and Fiona have a place where you feel you can be comfortable. All I want is for her to get well quickly and for both of you to get back to having fun. Now, did you have any other questions or concerns for me before I set you two free?”

   Fiona’s mother shook her head. “I don’t think so, Doctor. If something comes up, I can call?”

   “Absolutely. Please do.” Nimbus smiled again and opened the door for the woman and her daughter. “Goodbye, Fiona!”

   “Guh-bah, Doggtor,” the girl managed around the cough drop.

   The doctor closed the door after them and then set about tidying up her exam room. The box of sterile gloves went back into a large white cabinet by the door. Rubbing alcohol, gauze, swabs, and a pack of tongue depressors went in with them. The thin paper pillowcases and sheets on the exam table went into the trash without a replacement; Fiona had been her last appointment for the day, so the table would be fine as-is until the next morning. Once she was finished, the lights were turned off and the door left unlocked for the cleaning crew.

   At first glance, Nimbus Madasta was the very essence of aristocracy. Even in doctor’s scrubs. Even without make-up or jewelry or any of the other glamorous trappings one would expect from the entitled. She just held that aura of refinement, that sense that she floated across the room, removed from the petty problems of the ‘common’ people.

   Until she smiled, anyway. Then it slid away, the gentleness running from the corners of her lips all the way up to her eyes igniting the same kind of warmth one would get by the hearth after coming in from a frosty night. Nimbus embodied compassion, as anyone who spent more than a minute with her would say. The very essence of humble gratitude, her station left at the door, never to be brought up or considered when dealing with the infirm. Her patients were her first concern. Her only concern.

   She was very popular at the hospital.

   Any good feelings she had there, however, did nothing to prepare her for the sight of Talys Wannigan leaning against the pillar just outside the hospital’s front doors. She was struck with the sudden uneasy assumption that he was there to see her. His face lit up at the sight of her, confirming her suspicion, though now she was at a loss for a reason why. Sure, she had met the man a few times, but it was always in passing at some sociopolitical event she had attended with Euphrates. Hardly any words had been shared between them, but she couldn’t forget the… slimy impression he had left behind.

   “Councilman,” she said cordially. “This is a surprise.”

   “I know, I know.” Talys pushed himself off the post wearing a smile that, much like his outfit, was much too large to look natural. “Truth be told, I wasn’t planning on coming here. Not specifically here, anyway. I go on walks when the stresses of the workplace become overwhelming, and my walk took me in this direction today. It wasn’t until the hospital sign came into view, though, that my mind got to working on a possible solution to my current woes. But my apologies: how have you been, Miss Madasta?”

   “Doctor Madasta, if you please,” she corrected. “I put in the years and racked up the debt. The least I could get in return is the honorific.”

   Talys gave a bow that didn’t necessarily look sarcastic but sure felt like it. “My apologies, Doctor.”

   “Think nothing of it. What brings you to my hospital, Councilman?”

   “Well, you see, I’ve been having some trouble reaching a colleague of mine. Euphrates. It’s become a bit, ah, I don’t want to say irksome. Inconvenient? Inconvenient. But then I recalled that my friend isn’t so much the lone wolf he pretends to be, and that the love of his life just so happened to work at the hospital I was passing by. Long story short, Doctor, I stopped by to see if you could help me get in touch with Euphrates.”

   Nimbus hooked a rebel strand of hair behind her ear and shifted her weight. “I’m afraid I don’t know where he is, Councilman. I wish I could be more helpful, but alas.”

   “He didn’t tell you where he was going? Perhaps I could meet him there.”

   “He did not.”

   “That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

   “Euphrates is not a pet that I would keep him on a leash. As you well know, he has a job that requires a tremendous amount of attention and energy. If he isn’t responding to your calls, it may very well be that he is simply out for a walk, overwhelmed by the stresses of the job.”

   Try as he might, Talys couldn’t quite keep from smirking at that. “You might be right. If that’s the case, maybe you could–”

   “Councilman, let me stop you right there. In the same way Euphrates would never deign to come into my exam room and diagnose one of my patients, I would and will never involve myself in his work. He is my lover. I am not his secretary.”

   A dry moment of silence stretched between them. The poli smiled slowly and gave a bow. This time, it was deeper and meant more as an acknowledgement of respect.

   “That has never been clearer to me than now. My apologies, Doctor Madasta. May the rest of your day be easy.”

   “And you, Councilman Wannigan.”

   Nimbus’ lips stretched tight in a smile born from practiced courtesy. She walked past the man with a grace that belied the tension in her body, keeping her eyes on her vehicle. Talys hadn’t threatened her, nor did she feel threatened, but there was something there all the same. Something off. A tickle at the back of her mind made her suddenly worry for Euphrates. Talys watching her as she drove away served only to make that feeling worse.
*****
   Archimedes’ mind was aching with focus as he tried to make sense of the battlefield in front of him. His opponent was a clever one. One wrong move would surely spell his quick destruction. Every decision needed to count. With the weight of that responsibility fully settled on his shoulders, he took one trembling hand and moved a black horseman three circles to the left.

   Caesar’s eyebrows lifted at the same time Archimedes’ fingers did. “That’s your move? Huh. Okay. If you want to change your mind, though, I’m willing to make a one-time exception to the rules.”

   “I know what you’re trying to do.”

   “Hey, if you’re sure, I don’t want to–”

   “You’re playing mind games. Mind games typically come into play when somebody’s feeling scared.”

   Caesar laughed. “Yeah, alright, Carnahan. What’s to be scared of? You’ve never beaten me. That’s not a mind game, it’s a fact.”

   And it was, despite hundreds of games spread over nearly two decades. Ever since Archimedes and Caesar had found an old dakarrat board at a yard sale in their neighborhood. It had come cheap as several pieces were missing. Grey helped them fashion replacements out of scrap metals but had little interest in the game itself. It became Archimedes’ and Caesar’s pastime, one they both grew savvy at, but though there had been a handful of occasions when he had come close, Ark really had never beaten his friend.

   “I feel good about this one.”

   “You say that at least once every game.”

   “And yet I notice you still haven’t made your move.”

   “I’m savoring the moment,” said Caesar, though his furrowed brow was telling a different story. He reached out and hovered his hand over a blue chaplain, but pulled back without making contact. The second time, he caught himself before his hand reached a piece but it still revealed his indecision. Maybe Archimedes had a shot after all.

   The intercom in Caesar’s room crackled to life. Grey’s voice piped through, moderately concerned. “Hey, I need you guys in the cockpit.”

   “We’re a little busy at the moment,” said Archimedes.

   “Busy your asses to the cockpit!”

   He shut the intercom off, leaving Archimedes and Caesar to stare at each other in silence. Caesar moved to put the dakarrat pieces away. Ark slapped his hand.

   “Don’t you dare. You’re not getting out of this that easy. If you still can’t figure out a move, though, maybe you can get some pointers from our esteemed pilot.”

   Caesar grumbled and pushed him out of his room.
   Grey glanced from the control board out into the space beyond the viewports of the Sol Searcher. The traffic that had congested the entry point to the Causeway had dissipated not long after the crafts all passed through the rift, with ships headed to different planets or moons. Some would continue on to another Causeway and another galaxy beyond. Others would go searching for new asteroids to mine or a spaceport to conduct business in. With so many different directions to go in, it served as a reminder that the universe was very, very vast. It wasn’t long before they found their ship alone again.

   Or maybe not. His eyes flicked back down to the blinking orange light to the left of his steering rig. He hadn’t noticed it going off until after the Searcher had passed through the Causeway and had no idea how long it had been active. That could be a problem.

   “What’s the big deal, Toliver? I had ol’ boy on the ropes.” Archimedes ducked into the cockpit. He peered through the viewport but turned to his friend when he saw nothing of interest. Caesar stood behind him, rolling his eyes.

   “The comm signal has been going off. For a while, I think.”

   “Who’s trying to hail us?” Caesar asked.

   “No idea.”

   “Have you tried directing the signal back? Hailing them instead?”

   “Yep. Nothing.” Grey scratched at his jaw. “The thing is, I don’t think they’re trying to communicate with us at all, whoever it is. They’re just using the signal to target us. It’s less alarming than say, a weapons targeting signal.”

   Archimedes looked thoughtful. “They’re locking on to the ship so they can follow us, then. Authorities?”

   “No,” Caesar said. “The authorities would hail us, stop us, and board us if they were really interested. But why would they be? We’re not breaking any laws. We took a job to deliver a package. We haven’t absconded with it or even opened it.”

   “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

   “That still doesn’t explain why they don’t just stop and board us.”

   “Caesar’s right,” said Grey. “Whoever it is, it isn’t the cops.”

   Archimedes frowned. He leaned in towards the passenger’s seat and craned his head, trying to get a glimpse of space behind the Searcher. It was a futile effort; the craft’s body extended out to either side to compensate for the narrow hallways and crew bedrooms that made up the interior. Normally the ship’s control board would have a video display running for the top-mounted camera, but the lens had broken months ago. It was yet another item on the not-inconsiderable list of pending ship repairs that were needed.

   “Do you have any thoughts on who it might be?” he asked.

   “Sure,” said Grey. “They could be rival couriers. Scavengers. One of your vengeful ex-girlfriends. But they’re probably something else.”

   “So what do we do?”

   “Well…” Grey pointed a finger at Caesar. “You keep shooting me down every time I suggest arming this bucket, so we aren’t going to be manning the guns. I guess we’re just going to have to haul our asses to Peloclade and hope our tail is content just to follow.”
*****
   As a child, Euphrates could never sleep while on the move, and certainly never while on a spacecraft. Growing up in poverty, the idea of stars just outside the metal walls he was pressed against excited him, and the unfamiliar jostling during take-offs and landings kept him skittish and more than a little nauseous. With car rides across the country, it was a little bit different; his impatience to reach his destination kept him energized and awake until his young body couldn’t take it anymore and finally succumbed to exhaustion.

   It took years for him to discover the usefulness of an in-transit nap. Not everything could be solved with a video call or a holo-meeting. His obligations both legal and otherwise had grown to encompass so many different things that he found himself traveling constantly. Catching a brief moment of shuteye gave respite to a mind that was constantly turning over, relentlessly searching for opportunities to exploit. By the time his foot hit pavement after a long drive or he descended an off-ramp, he was back to operating at full capacity.

   His return to Thorus after his meeting with Serrano was no different. The bounty hunter’s involvement effectively took the package off of his list of concerns until the time came that it was actually in his possession. He was able now to devote his full attention to the trade issues with the Ryxan.

   “Who is driving?” he asked the steward once the craft had landed. He pulled a cushioned ring from around his neck and tossed it onto the seat next to him. His briefcase was pulled from beneath his seat, the latches checked to make sure they were secure.

   “Rollo, sir.”

   “Good. Call ahead so he’s ready. Tell him I’ll be going to the CED.”

   The steward led the way to the door of the aircraft and pulled a lever next to the open portal. A thick box at the base of the entrance slid away from the craft and unfolded into a thin staircase leading down to the ground. Euphrates stepped out into a bright, cool day. A smattering of gray clouds in the distance hinted at the possibility of rain later in the afternoon.

   That would be fine. The planet could use some water, and he planned on being in an office for most of the day, anyway. The Center for Element Distribution was a notoriously droll place full of scientists who wanted little to do with politics, but Euphrates had demanded an emergency meeting. He needed to know what the absolute bare minimum amount of the Ryxan’s oil was necessary to prevent any serious problems for Human industry.

   All this for oil, he thought and scowled. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

   The left side of his chest vibrated. Left inside pocket. His personal comm unit, then. Rollo stood by the back seat of a long, dark blue car and held the door open. Euphrates waved at the driver with his left hand and retrieved the comm with his right.

   “This is Destidante.”

   “Hello, my love,” purred the voice from the other side. His body flushed with a sudden warmth. “Are you home?”

   “Just landed, actually. What’s going on? Did you manage to get in a break from work?”

   “I got off early today. Which was nice, honestly. I love my patients, but sometimes I just need an afternoon to myself.” Nimbus took a deep breath as if she were about to add something else, then held it. She let it out a moment later, off to the side, away from the comm. Euphrates heard it anyway.

   “What’s wrong?” he asked. He slid into the back seat of the car and waved Rollo to the front, opting to close the door himself.

   “Nothing. Well, I was just thinking… I was hoping to expand the gardens this summer. I was given some new strains to plant as a gift from some of the ladies in the office.”

   Safely far away from her view, he raised a hand in bemusement. “What– yes, of course. You don’t need to ask me for things like that. It’s your home as well, Nimbus.”

   “Even so, I wanted to talk to you about it first. I think communication in a relationship is important, even for things like this.” She paused again. Euphrates half-expected her to ask what color flowers he would prefer she plant next. Instead, she said, “Talys Wannigan stopped by today.”

   Euphrates felt the world freeze around him. He blinked a few times, sure he had heard her wrong. She added nothing to convince him. “He stopped by. Stopped by the house?”

   “The hospital.”

   “He came by your work?” He heard his voice crack with incredulity and cringed. “What did he say to you?”

   “He wanted to know where you were and why you were ignoring his calls.”

   “That’s it?”

   “Yes.” Concern edged into Nimbus’ voice. “Is everything alright, Euphrates? Is something going on?”

   “No, nothing is going on. What did you tell him?”

   “I told him I didn’t know where you were, because I didn’t, although even if I did I hope you trust that I wouldn’t just tell somebody that.”

   “Of course I know, love. Of course I do. Look, I’m going to let you go. I’ll see you tonight at the house.”

   “Is everything alright?” she asked again. Euphrates bit the inside of his cheek.

   “Everything is fine. I love you.”

   “I love you, too.”

   Euphrates switched off the call and slid the comm unit back into his pocket before he could throw it against the window. His hands clenched and unclenched around the leather curvature of his seat. He took deep breaths. He counted to ten. He continued on to twenty.

   Once he felt enough control had returned to him, he called up front to Rollo. “We’re going to have to reschedule with the CED. Take me to Parliament instead. Another meeting his suddenly taken priority.”
*****
   The three co-captains of the Sol Searcher stared fixedly at a blue screen in the center of the control console. The screen displayed a graphic representation of their ship with a grid overlay indicating the separate shield panels. It also functioned as a proximity alert and an indicator for any nearby energy signatures. It was how they kept the Searcher from crashing into anything while their external camera was damaged.

   It was also how they knew that the ship pursuing them had grown uncomfortably close.

   “They’re really gunning it,” murmured Grey. “They’re pushing their ship harder than I would trust this hunk of junk to do.”

   “It’s a hunk of junk that you picked,” Archimedes pointed out.

   “And one that I love.” Grey shot back, “but I’m not going to pretend it’s something that it isn’t.”

   Caesar cleared his throat. “Is anyone else wondering if they’re going to tell-” The comm finally crackled with activity. “Never mind.”

   “Couriers,” said the voice over the comm, sounding like rocks in a tumbler. “Couriers, come in. Come in. Are you receiving this message?”

   Caesar sat down in the co-pilot’s seat so he could access the switch that allowed him an outgoing response. “We hear you loud and clear. This is Captain Anada of the Sol Searcher. Who am I addressing?”

   “You’re addressing the Captain of the Grim Pagoda. Glad to let you know ahead of time that we’re planning on slagging you all into oblivion. You boys got any last words?”

   Grey smirked and leaned in toward Archimedes. “I think I know who this is.” Louder, into the intercom, he said, “Taghrin, isn’t it? How are the gonads I kicked up into your belly, they still sore? Or what do you call them? What’s the Bozav word for balls?”

   Beside him, Caesar held his hands out in the universal sign for What the hell?

   Taghrin’s voice came back in, rougher even than before. “The only downside to blasting you into pieces is that I can’t personally pluck your eyes out while you’re still alive to hear me eat them.”

   “Hey, moron. You realize you can’t blow us up, right? If you do, the package goes up with us and you’re out of a payday. So how about you just keep on following us to Peloclade and we can let the authorities help us hammer out Right of Possession?”

   “Or we could just knock a hole in your hull and grab the package after you freeze to death.”

   Archimedes nodded to himself. “That would probably work.”

   “Shut up, Ark,” Grey and Caesar both snapped. The static of the intercom disappeared, indicating the bandit’s ship had ended the transmission. The blinking light went dead with it.

   “They’re all talk,” Grey said after a moment. Caesar shook his head.

   “You do recall that one of them has a rap sheet for murder, yes?”

   “Bah,” said Grey. “Killing someone planetside is one thing. Wrecking a ship and murdering the crew is different. There are audio logs and travel records involved. It would take some serious balls, and we’ve already established that I kicked-”

   The rest of his sentence was drowned out by an obnoxiously loud buzzing sound. Archimedes slapped at a button to shut the alarm off. The control panel was awash in red emergency lights, a secondary alert that took the captains’ hearts and dropped them into the pits of their stomachs.

   Weapons had just been locked on the Searcher.
*****
   Rollo pulled the car into the private lot beneath the Parliament building. Several spaces were open – most of the politicians gone for the day – and he found a spot to park near the elevator. Euphrates was out and moving before the vehicle was fully stopped. A woman held the elevator door open for him until he was able to get inside.

   He glanced over to give his thanks and realized he knew her. Carol Sharma. She was some kind of custody lawyer. Euphrates had purposefully made her acquaintance on the slim possibility he might one day need to know the best way to leverage someone’s children against them. Euphrates nodded at her and pressed the button for Talys’ floor.

   “Councilman Destidante,” she said, beaming. “I’m surprised to see you here so late in the day. How are you?”

   “To be honest, Carol, I am positively seething with rage.”

   “Oh, I… okay.”

   The rest of the elevator ride was quiet.

   Euphrates reached his destination first and stepped out without a word. He strode through the rows of desks and straggling workers with a singular focus. At the back end of the floor was Talys Wannigan’s office. A young woman with bleached-blonde hair sat just outside the door. She was setting the phone down when she caught sight of him. Her eyes widened.

   “Councilman Wannigan is busy right now,” she said, standing. “If you want, I can-”

   “Quiet, intern,” he responded, breezing past her. His hand gripped the doorknob and it twisted freely in his grip. It occurred to him in a fleeting thought that it would have looked absurd had a locked door stopped his righteous indignation in its tracks.

   “I’m not an intern, Councilman. I’m a full-time–”

   He closed the door behind him and turned the deadbolt, muffling her response. Talys Wannigan was standing over his desk, examining a handful of reports. He looked up at the sound of Euphrates’ entrance. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.

   “Why, Councilman Destidante, it’s good to see you. I’ve been looking for you all day. It’s lucky you caught me before I left.”

   “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Euphrates snarled. “I would have found you. I always know where you are.”

   “Is that so?”

   “It’s so.” Euphrates rounded the desk and approached the other man. Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. “You are audacious, Talys, to invade my lover’s work.”

   “It was hardly an invasion. I reached out to you multiple times and you didn’t respond. I feared for your well-being. I happened to be passing the hospital and I thought she might be able to ease my concerns.”

   Euphrates resisted the urge to grab the man by the neck. “There are some unspoken rules in what you and I do. They are important ones. Especially as regards to dragging unaffiliated family and friends into conflict. Whatever your problem is with me, it should stay focused on me.”

   Any sign of geniality left Talys’ face. “It doesn’t work like that, Destidante. Not with a snake like you. It’s important that you understand I see you exactly for what you are.”

   “Stay. Away. From Nimbus.”

   Talys leaned in until their noses were nearly touching. “Or what?”

   There was a thin metal rectangle in Euphrates’ right pocket. His finger traced the outline of it through the fabric of his pants. A small button on the side, when pressed, would release a sharp little blade from one end. Carbiron. It would cut through flesh like paper.

   It would be quick, he thought. A swift blow to the solar plexus to knock the wind out of him. Hit the carotid, twist the knife. That’s all it would take.

   The right side of his chest vibrated, pulling him out of the fantasy. Other thoughts rushed to mind: the secretary, Carol Sharma, surveillance cameras. It would be difficult to guide the Human race from a prison cell. His lip curled in disgust.

   “And here I thought you were at least smart enough to know that when you see a snake, the last thing you should do is step within striking distance.”

   Euphrates backed away, out of stabbing range. It was time to leave. If Jeth Serrano was calling him already, it had to be something important, and he gained nothing by prolonging this pissing match with Wannigan.

   “No foreplay and only ten seconds of action?” Talys called after him. “It’s a wonder Doctor Madasta stays with you at all.”

   The barb meant nothing and Euphrates let it fall behind him as such as he headed toward the elevator. The secretary tried to admonish him for barging past, but he simply barged past again. Once the doors of the lift were closed, he pulled the comm from his pocket and snarled into it.
*****
   “What?”

   Euphrates sounded pissed. Jeth glanced across the cockpit to his partner, but Crajax was focused on the action through the viewport.

   “There’s been a development.”

   “What kind of development?”

   “Well, it wasn’t hard tracking down the couriers. We’re through the Causeway and partway to Peloclade, but it looks like, ah, it looks like somebody else has it out for these guys. There’s an unidentified ship currently lighting them up.”

   There was a sharp inhalation of breath on the other end of the line. “I already told you what I wanted. Make sure that package isn’t destroyed. Reach me when it’s finished.”

   The call cut off abruptly. Jeth tucked his comm unit away and gripped the steering rig of his ship, the Mathra D’abai. Crajax pried himself away from the one-sided dogfight to look at his partner.

   “What did he say?”

   “He said proceed like normal.”

   Crajax smirked. “Whoever is flying that courier rig is a hell of a pilot.”

   “I do not care. We’ve still got to bail him out.”
*****
   “Now!” cried Archimedes.

   Grey jerked the controls to the right and a set of blaster bolts streaked past the Searcher. Archimedes was watching the display intently, waiting for signs of energy output spiking behind them. Grey was using his prompts to make evasive maneuvers. They were still alive, but they hadn’t been able to dodge everything, and their shield panels were on their last legs.

   “What’s that?” asked Caesar, pointing at the bottom of the screen. A larger blip had popped up where there was nothing before.

   “I think that’s another ship,” said Archimedes.

   “Is that good or bad?”

   “How the hell am I supposed to know? Left, Grey! Now!”

   Grey shifted the steering rig but he wasn’t quite fast enough. A bolt connected with the back end of the Searcher and a shudder rolled through the ship. The navigation system blinked out, replaced by a blank black screen. The image returned a few seconds later, this time flickering intermittently.

   Once the bandits had started firing, Grey knew it wasn’t likely that they would make Peloclade without a miraculous intervention. There were a few planets on the way, though, and he had picked up speed in their direction, hoping he could reach something before they were disabled or destroyed. He could see one of them coming up on their starboard side.

   Archimedes leaned closer to the control board. “Energy output on the screen… it looks like the newcomers are firing on our bad guys!”

   “That’s great,” muttered Grey. He glanced past Caesar, through the viewport. “But it doesn’t mean anything. What’s that?”

   “What?” asked Caesar, eyes wide. Behind them, the bandits banked their ship hard to one side right as the third party fired again. Two more crimson blasts passed them by completely and slammed directly into the Sol Searcher’s hull. Lights flashed across the control console. A low shriek sounded from the engine room.

   “Planet,” shouted Grey, dragging the word out. “What. Planet. Is. That?”

   “Uh. Um. Based on the duration of our trip and our relative location between the gate we came through and Peloclade, it’s probably one of two planets. Maybe.”

   “You sound confident,” said Archimedes, his voice tight. “Go on.”

   “It’s, um, either Taggrath. Primarily a Dyr-occupied planet.”

   “Oh, good. Because the Dyr love us so much. Or?”

   “Or Astrakoth. It isn’t occupied, so far as I know, save for maybe a science base or two.”

   “Even better,” growled Grey.

   “Why is that better?” asked Caesar.

   “I was kidding. Both are bad. We’ve got to go down there, though. We’re too vulnerable in space.” There was a loud cracking noise and the Searcher shuddered hard.

   “Stabilizer’s out,” warned Archimedes.

   “Yep.” Grey turned the ship away from their pursuers. They broke the atmosphere moments later. Flames licked up the front of the craft and it felt like every part of the ship was shaking independently.

   “Zast! Move, Caesar!” Archimedes yanked his friend up from the co-pilot’s seat and strapped himself into place. “Get in the back! Buckle in quickly!”

   As Caesar staggered out of the cockpit and towards the extra crew quarters, Grey continued to wrestle with the steering rig. “I was going to bring us down so we could do better evasive maneuvering, but I’ve only got about half of the control we need.”

   “To do what?” asked Archimedes. He flipped a series of switches, rerouting emergency power to the flight controls. Grey laughed humorlessly.

   “To pull us back up. I’m thinking it’s not an option anymore.”

   “Great.” A jagged crack stretched across the main viewport. The cockpit began to heat up and a shrill whistling caused both men to wince. “There’s a split in the windshield!”

   “I can see that” Grey snapped back. “It’s right in front of my face.” His eyes lit up with a sudden idea. “Toggle the Peregrine drive.”

   Archimedes stared at him. “Come again?”

   “Stagger the Peregrine! One second intervals. The start-stop might let me balance us out.”

   “It might also blow the whole engine! Or rip us in half! Triggering a speed drive during a dive – a speed drive, mind you, that is not a Peregrine, but a patchwork monster you made that has never had that kind of duress – that’s a mad plan, Grey.”

   “Look, the Searcher might be our ship, but she’s my baby, right down to the drive. I know her better than anybody, and I’m telling you: we either try this and maybe die, or we don’t try it, crash into the planet nose-first, and definitely die.”

   Archimedes let out a mouthful of air with a curse. “We’re going to feel mighty stupid if we told Caesar what great pilots we are just to blow ourselves up.”

   Grey grinned.

   Trying not to think about the many, many things that could go wrong, Archimedes reached one unsteady hand across the control console and let it hover over the switch that activated the Sol Searcher’s speed drive. It was a marvel that something with enough power to propel a spacecraft across the cosmos at high speeds was regulated by a simple metal lever. Giving in to reckless abandon, he began to toggle it back and forth.

   The ship began to undergo a series of jolts, jerking the two pilots back and forth in their seats. Grey yanked the controls back, struggling for some semblance of control even as two more cracks in the viewport split off from the original. Below them, the world flashed by in streaks of color. The Searcher began to level out but continued to descend without slowing.

   “Grey,” Archimedes said worriedly. He kept the Peregrine off and gripped the co-pilot’s controls.

   “This is as good as it gets, man. I’m aiming at that clearing up ahead.”

   “What clearing?”

   “The one! There!” Grey flapped his hand at the display screen. A chart had recalibrated automatically to show the clearest flight path, the surrounding terrain, and the nearest plausible landing options… of which there were none.

   “That’s not a clear– there are trees down there!”

   “Do you see a better alternative, Ark? Because I am open to options!”

   Archimedes’ eyes flicked from his controls to the viewport to the monitor. He reached over and pressed the ship’s comm button. It lit up immediately. At least that wasn’t out of order.

   “Caesar, you hooked in back there?” he asked.

   “Yeah,” came the tinny response. “What’s the situation?”

   “We’re going down. Prepare for a crash landing.”

   “Oh, god.”

   “Whichever one you pray to, pal.”

   Archimedes flipped the button back to its inactive position and focused on the matter at hand. He and Grey gave a single nod to each other and then strained to steer their ship towards the clearest patch of forest available to them.

   They plunged into the foliage like an apocalypse. The sound of trunks snapping around the wings of the Sol Searcher was near-deafening. Greenery rustled against and stained the viewport. The spacecraft moaned in distress and then slammed into the ground with calamitous purpose.

   Archimedes’ shoulder belt tore at the buckle, launching him forward. His forehead slammed into the corner of the control console. There was a brief moment where he could hear the sounds of scared and angry wildlife, and then he knew only a blackness deeper than space.

A Captain’s Duty Part Four

This is the final entry to A Captain’s Duty, the failed fantasy piece I was commissioned for. You can find the first three parts at A Captain’s Duty Part One, A Captain’s Duty Part Two, and A Captain’s Duty Part Three. At the end of the chapter, I’ll also break down where the other two parts roughly would have gone.
Chapter Four:

The Path of Man
   The Serpent’s Spine mountain range was dense with jagged boulders and considered largely uninhabitable due to the carnelian stones’ tendency to absorb and emit the heat of the sun. There were several known hiking trails but the best of them turned in circles. The worst led to a labyrinthine series of paths ultimately culminating in a dead end. For that reason it was widely regarded that these mountains were ones best to be avoided and circled if they needed to be passed.

   Mathias Kolter claimed differently. Upon waking, he maintained that there was a passage through that would shave days off of their journey. Korkarin did his best to ignore the human, but Bren took him aside before they left Trome to put some weight into the man’s words.

   “Let’s check it out,” she said.

   “What? No. Why should we?”

   “Because if he’s telling the truth, it will help us get to Wrane more quickly. We can use every little bit of extra time we can get.”

   “Sure, but what if he’s not telling the truth.”

   Bren rolled her eyes. “What does he have to gain from lying? If an ambush were in place, this would have been the place to do it. While we were coming. They could have just tossed our bodies in the pile with the rest.”

   “Who’s to say the idiot isn’t just making something up to try and appease me? You know how their kind are. Leeches, always looking for the first thing that might give them a little more. They always want more. More status. More money. More favors. Watch him lead us into some chasm simply because he can’t stop talking long enough to watch his step.”

   “Let’s go check it out, Tal. We’ve got to skirt the range anyway if we end up going around. We’ll see if it looks like the real deal. If we get a bad feeling, I’ll lead us out the way we came.”

   “We could lose half a day that was,” Korkarin objected.

   “Lose half a day and get rid of the extra baggage. That’s one outcome, sure. Or we save time and gain a new ally, chatty as he is. That alliance can be as long or short as you want it to be.”

   The captain scowled at her after a long pause and Bren smiled at his back because she knew she had reached him. That scowl was his go-to move when he refused to admit his defeat in anything. He had been using it since they were kids.

   Bren let Kolter ride behind her on her horse after a stern warning to watch his hands. Andigar’s disapproval was writ in his face, but he said nothing. He reminded himself that his place in this party was to follow. If his friend was okay with the plan, he would stand by her until the end.

   They rode with little conversation between them save for the human’s directions. It took just over half a day to reach the mountains. They ate as they traveled – dried and salted meat – and when they stopped, they treated themselves to some water. Kolter was allowed to partake and he thanked the group profusely until Andigar finally told him to shut his mouth.

   The Serpent’s Spine towered above them, all serrated edges and colored like dried blood on fine dirt. There was a faint whistle as the air slapped and danced through the peaks. It appeared every bit as unforgiving as the venomous creature that had given it its name.

   “Here we go,” Kolter said. “The pass doesn’t have an official name, but it has picked more than a few nicknames over the years. The Crooked Belly. The Swiftest Strike. I was always partial to Longtooth Pass just because it doesn’t make any kind of sense.”

   Tal narrowed his eyes and focused on the exterior of the mountains. “Where is it, Mathias?”

   “It’s right… hold on.” Kolter walked up an incline of loose rocks and directed both his arms towards what had appeared to be a solid cliff face. The human stuck one arm behind a break in the wall and the optical illusion became clear. “It starts here. The light gets you, right?”

   “I’ll be damned,” Bren whistled.

   “It still hasn’t proven anything,” Korkarin muttered. Louder he asked, “How’d you know about the passage?”

   “I’ve spent most of my life trying to make a living in Mekan, Captain. Things aren’t always easy for my people. We stab each other in the back about as often as we look out for each other. Sometimes we’ve got to get away from it all. Regroup. Remind ourselves why it’s so important for us to stick together and maintain our identity. This little traipse through the mountains, it’s one of the few things we have that is wholly ours.”

   “Is it dangerous?”

   “Isn’t everywhere? The pass isn’t any more dangerous than any other place.” Kolter grinned. “The mounts should fit fine coming through, as long as they’re doing so single file. The baunkar might be a tight fit.”

   “What did you say, you skinny little-”

   “Darian,” Bren said, placing a hand on Andigar’s forearm. “Easy. It was a joke.”

   The baunkar’s scowl relaxed and lost some of its flushed hue. “You’re… you’re right, lass. It’s the damn heat. It’s got my head all twisted up.”

   “Are you good to ride or do you need more water?” Korkarin has dismounted his horse and come up beside them.

   “I’m good, Captain.”

   “Then let’s go.”

   They walked their mounts up the incline and through the passage, following Kolter. It was a twisting, narrow entrance with the jagged edges of the canyon wall holding like jaws prepared to strike. Korkarin caught his sleeve on a rock around the third bend and came away with a thin slice. He hissed.

   “Tal?” Bren asked.

   “I’m fine. Keep going.”

   The sky was only just visible through the leaning walls. It was clear of clouds, bound to be another scorcher. A pair of spotted vultures circled overhead, their sizable wingspans casting nasty shadows. The vultures had once been exclusively scavenger birds, preying only on the dead and dying. A hundred years of adapting to desert settlers and more prepared travelers had led them to evolve into something much larger and much more aggressive. It wasn’t unheard of for a single bird to fell a grown man.

   They moved slowly and carefully, shuffling their feet. The hard rocks beneath their boots gradually transitioned into a fine tawny sand. The encroaching walls that boxed them in began to taper outwards. The light of day found itself no longer obstructed and fell upon them.

   After two hours of travel, the path had widened enough to allow them to walk three bodies across. The canyon walls remained rough but had smoothed out enough that they were no longer in danger of an accidental puncture wound. Four times they came to a fork where a second path would wind in the opposite direction. Kolter never hesitated as he led the group. He simply whistled a maadmi drinking tune, sweating profusely but otherwise merry. Andigar was nonplussed.

   “Here, hold on a second,” the baunkar called out. “You’re draggin’ us every which way through these mountains. How do we know you’ve got any clue where we’re going?”

   Kolter smirked and crossed his arms. “Do I look like I’m lost?”

   “You look like someone who hasn’t taken enough fists to the mouth.”

   The human laughed and walked back, past the group, past the animals. Bren sighed and ran to catch up with him. She grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. Before he could say a word, she pushed into his chest, driving him back until he hit the wall.

   “Listen to me,” she said. She kept her voice low, keeping the conversation between the two of them. “I’m the one who convinced Tal that this little detour of yours was worth checking out. They could have killed you, abandoned you, or cut out your tongue. I made sure that didn’t happen. I made sure you were allowed to tag along.”

   “And I appreciate that. Cut out my tongue? That seems a bit harsh.”

   “It would have been to keep you from spreading misinformation about Trome.”

   Kolter blinked. “I don’t understand.”

   “Everyone in that village was killed. That’s what you showed up too late to discover. That’s why we were talking about dead men’s houses. We don’t know who did it, but whoever was responsible is still out there. They’re running around somewhere with their own plan, a plan we can’t begin to fathom. Tensions are a bit high with us. Do you understand that?”

   Kolter swallowed hard. “I do now.”

   “Good. Tal’s a nice enough guy on his best days. This isn’t one of those days. Darian, well, he’s not a nice guy on his best days. And today? You see where I’m going with this?”

   “I think I can piece it together.”

   “Figured so. The boys, they don’t think you’re too bright, but I see a light or two rolling around behind those big dopey eyes of yours. I would appreciate it if you stopped jerking us around and gave us a straight answer. One, hopefully, that won’t make me regret letting you have some of my water.”

   “I was doing that when you grabbed me. In order to properly illustrate, though you’ve got to follow me back a little bit. The next one isn’t for a while.”

   “The next what, Mathias?”

   He grinned. “Trust me for another hundred feet?”

   She didn’t like his smile. Part of it was just his face. The roundness of a human’s face made even the slim ones look fat. It added to their slovenly reputation. She didn’t even want to think about the way their ears resembled the cropping punishment reserved for sultani slavers. Humans were ungainly and unpleasant and a happy one just made her think of a hog in the midst of a mud bath.

   Kolter’s smile had another issue, though. It was too confident. Too free of burdens. It bothered her that they were plagued with so many questions and uncertainties while this degenerate seemed to be enjoying himself.

   Bren pushed his shoulder hard into the scratchy stone and then released him. To his credit, the human hid his wince. He brushed the dirt from his clothes and continued back the way they came. A flippant wave of his hand beckoned them to follow.

   Andigar and his pony stayed where they were (“I ain’t moving again until I know what’s going on or where I’m supposed to be heading”) but the sultani trudged after Kolter while trying to ignore the heat on their necks and the rivulets of sweat running under their thick clothes.

   They didn’t have far to go before their guide pulled up short and pointed up at the canyon wall. Bren spotted it first. She shook her head in mild confusion and then pointed it out to Tal: twenty feet or so above the ground, a small pattern of swirls and dashed had been painted. Whoever had left it there had used a coat only slightly more yellow than the rocks around it.

   “What does it mean?” Korkarin asked.

   “It’s human code,” Kolter said, waggling his fingers in exaggerated mystique. When he saw the dearth of amusement on his companions’ faces, he sighed. “It’s an instruction. A direction. It would take too long to teach you how to read it, but it tells me which crosspath to take and how many paces until I should keep an eye out for the next one. This travel route has been around for over six hundred years, Captain. Back when my people had more of their own to speak of. Some strong, enterprising men decided a little thing like mountains weren’t going to be enough to stop them from getting around easily. They carved their way through, set up some dummy paths, and made a code. It used to connect two human cities. Real cities. Time passed. Human influence faded. The cities disappeared. The path – and the paint, shockingly enough – remained.”

   “How did you say you learned all this?” Bren asked.

   “I didn’t say, but come on. Humans talk to each other, you know. We’re not animals. I read a lot, too. Love reading.”

   Korkarin’s brows rose. “Where did a human get books in Mekan?”

   “If we’re going to prostrate for you, or the maadmi, or the baunkar, or whoever else in hopes of landing a career and a real life, we better make sure we’re actually useful. That means education. Knowledge. A skill. Where did I get books? I’m a human, Captain, so I did what humans and sultani bureaucrats do: I stole them.”

   He winked and started back towards Darian Andigar. Bren and Korkarin looked away from the symbol on the wall to stare after him.

   “What do you think his skills are?”

   The captain shrugged, exasperated. “Whatever they are, being a nuisance has to be near the top.”
   It turned out the Serpent’s Spine wasn’t quite as devoid of life as they had been led to believe. Over the hours they spent moving through the mountains, the party caught glimpses of three different kinds of lizards, a short-eared hare and some type of rodent with long legs and large feet. The coos of a bird – Kolter had called it a club-breasted thrash – drifted softly through the air, but its nest was tucked away deep in a recess somewhere and they caught no sight of it.

   As they traveled, they kept conversation to a minimum. Bren and Darian would occasionally recall and share a memory from their time doing missions together. Bren and Korkarin would similarly bring up something from their childhood. Andigar didn’t speak to Korkarin. Nobody spoke to Mathias, but the human continued whistling mirthfully, unfazed. They kept to the shaded areas as best they could, but the heat found a way to beat down on them regardless. They rationed their water, staying mindful of their mounts. Andigar’s pony faltered once; they rested the beast and continued on fine from there, but it left them uneasy.

   It was almost a relief when the sun finally dropped and the moon, red-eyed and resolute, took its post in the sky. Korkarin pointed out a small compression in the canyon wall and they settled in there for the night.

   Their next obstacle was the cold. It was the desert’s great mystery that a place with such malicious heat could transition into a vindictive freeze once the stars came out to play. The drop in temperature was not unexpected but was no more tolerable for the knowledge of it. As Kolter’s supplied had been left behind with the dead horse he had abandoned (“I always planned on returning to get it once I found out what you were up to,” he had said. “Things obviously turned out differently.”), there were only three sleeping bags between them. Bren volunteered hers to Kolter and took first watch. Korkarin gave his to Bren during his own shift.

   Now it was Andigar’s turn to stand guard. Kolter snored softly by the animals while Bren and Korkarin shared the captain’s bag. The male sultani slept with his arm around his friend and the baunkar, draped in his own sleeping bag, marveled at the vulnerability his fellow mercenary was showing. He had known Bren Dendalion for several years; vulnerable wouldn’t have been in the top thirty adjectives he would have used to describe her.

   He had been a member of the Beryl Cavaliers for a couple years before Bren had sauntered into their camp. Her hands had been shaky and her skin pale, but when she spoke, it was with the assuredness of a veteran. She had demanded a place in the band, for less pay at first if necessary, but she guaranteed she would earn an equal share by the year’s end.

   Fellian – a sultani that had been cast out of Mekan for her past crimes and the founder of the Cavaliers – agreed to give Bren a trial, for amusement if nothing else. Bren’s swordplay had been sloppy, but even then she could beat anyone in an archery challenge. Fellian trained her in the areas she was weakest in. It took only five months before she was paid out the same as everyone else.

   They were a bunch of misfits, outcasts and former criminals trying to do some good. All allegiances to their races or any previous organizations they may have belonged to were severed. Racial hang-ups were disregarded. They were one group. A family.

   Even so, not all jobs they were hired to do required all members. They often found themselves mixing and matching groups to best fit the skill set needed for the contract. Additionally, some groupings paired better than others. Natural chemistry that led to almost precognizant compatibility on the battlefield.

   Bren found Andigar early on and clung to him. It wasn’t because she needed protection or because she wanted his help. She simply saw that he often kept to himself – even then, even among friends – and wanted him to have company. She had laughed off his gruffness and ignored his demands to be left alone. When he broke down and pleaded for her to go because of his troubles controlling his temper, she listened to everything he had to say. After he was finished, she refused again to let him stew in his lonesomeness.

   Once he finally decided to let her in, they became almost inseparable. They worked well together, often able to communicate with the slightest of physical cues. He trusted her implicitly, she who saw the worst sides of him and neither flinched nor turned away. He suspected that though she didn’t often speak of herself, her feelings or her past, she trusted him as well.

   She saved his life. He saved hers in return. He kept his mouth shut when she began a relationship with Gris Palmos, a fellow Cavalier. He continued his silence when it went wrong, when she took it out on their next targets, when she wept in his tent because she knew it was the only place none of the others would see her.

   It was the only time he had seen her with her guard down. It was the only time he could have used the word vulnerable. At least, until tonight. Until she had reconnected with Tal Korkarin and had dragged him into the sultani captain’s mission. There were years more between them, years unknown to Andigar. Then there was Korkarin. He was another thing altogether. It was obvious that the man had a code he stuck to, an idea of right and wrong that he stood behind. Beyond that, the man was nearly inscrutable, staying silent just as often as he pelted someone with questions. As fine a quality as that was, it also lent him a sense of condescension and superiority that Andigar doubted the captain even knew he had. Korkarin’s limited experience outside of Mekan had also bred an unsconsious racism. The captain had never benefited from a multi-cultural brotherhood. He grew up in the heart of sultani lands, with sultani practices and biases. It made him difficult to like.

   It didn’t help that the thing inside Andigar didn’t like anybody. It twisted up on itself, full of anger, full of rage. The beast inside him wanted out. There was a time when he could do nothing to stop it. He would lose feeling in his limbs, his body. The next thing he knew, he would be watching himself as if in a dream. He watched the violence unfold and when he came to, his hands would be awash in blood. Sometimes it would splash onto his chest or his face. It might go as far as elbow-deep, but his hands… his hands were always red.

   Two terrifying years passed from the first incident until he was able to bring it under some semblance of control. It still slipped out now and again, generally in times of great stress. His fellow mercenaries considered it fortuitous for a mission, though most kept him at arm’s length. They liked him, he felt, but didn’t trust him. They welcomed him but didn’t full accept him. None of them did. Except Bren.

   There was a noise in the distance that sounded like a rock being crushed. Pebbles rolling down the cliff wall, perhaps. Rocks being displaced as animals moved around, preparing for the day. Or… maybe something else.

   Andigar stood up and shed his sleeping bag. He glanced up at the sky; it was already turning a deep blue from onyx. Another sound floated forth, nearly identical to the first. He reached for his axe.
   The swords came together with a shudder and then slid apart as the two opponents moved past each other. They circled around, eyes on the tip of the other’s blade. They stood in stances they had seen others practice hundreds of years.

   Bren hooked her hair behind her ear with her off hand quickly before returning it to the hilt. “What was that, Tal? You’re going to have to step it up if you want to beat me.”

   “It’s not fair,” Korkarin said. His sword was almost comically oversized for the young boy’s frame. “You’re taller than me. You’ve got too much of an advantage.”

   “My dad said if you’re going to get into a fight, you have to create victory for yourself. You can’t blame me for you losing just because I’m growing up faster.”

   Korkarin stepped in quickly and swung his sword high. Bren ducked underneath it just to see his knee rising rapidly towards her face. She raised her left forearm up to block it; the force still sent her reeling backward. Her ankles crossed each other and she landed on her back. The sword was released reflexively.

   Before she could grab the hilt and scrabble back to her feet, Korkarin had kicked the weapon away. His own was pointed at her throat. His face was stretched into a wide grin.

   “Was that better?”

   Bren smirked. “Maybe a little. And you said you wanted to be a shopkeeper.”

   “I said it would be nice to have my own little store, and I still think so. I should know how to stop thieves, though, don’t you think?”

   “Yeah. We’ll see.”
   Several years later, he looked so handsome in his training uniform. The creases were all smooth, freshly pressed by Yana. His mouth was set in an expression of discomfort, but his eyes held boundless energy.

   “Who am I supposed to spar with now?” Bren asked, playfully tugging on his collar.

   “I have no doubt you’ll find a suitable replacement quick enough,” he said. “Try not to hurt them too bad.”

   “No promises.” Bren’s smile faltered and she sighed. “I wish your training weren’t so… isolated. I’m going to miss you.”

   “It’s only a year or two. You’ll keep busy. You always do.”

   She smiled and agreed with him, but her heart wasn’t in it. He was her best friend, had been almost since they were born. What would she do without him?
   It was five months after her father died that she demanded to be a part of the Beryl Cavaliers. It had been difficult seeing the man who raised her and taught her so much, the man she loved more than anything, waste away and die from a disease he couldn’t kill with a sword. Lungrot, the physicians had said. Her father had never smoked griproot. Second-hand smoke was the physician’s best guess and another twist of the knife.

   So she had sought the mercenary band out, wanting to surround herself with warrior types, tough men from all walks of life. People who spoke the same language she did, the one her father taught her. It was the same language Tal had spoken before leaving her to become a guard.

   It was harder than she had imagined. Even with good people there. Even with the smile she managed to plaster on her face to mask the pain. Even with, for a time, a man who had been a lover and a confidante.

   She could still remember the first man she killed. It had been with a blade, back before she had developed a fondness for archery even though archery had always come more naturally to her. Maybe killing a man with a sword is the reason why she began to prefer using the bow. She remembered the tears flowing down the man’s face. She remembered the hot tracks left by her own that night when she –
   “Fudrossi! Bren! Captain! Get up, we’ve got company!”

   Andigar’s words cut through her slumber as clear as a bell. Fudrossi. The baunkar word for “alarm”. Her eyes shot open and the weight of sleep evaporated as she rolled over to grab her bow and quiver. She caught glimpses in the edge of her eye of Korkarin and Kolter waking, but her attention was focused elsewhere.

   Ten figures – human men, all of them – were rushing down the canyon towards them. The blades they wielded were curved swords, similar to the maadmi make but crafted larger to fit the hands of the humans. Their eyes were wide, but they made no noise as sped forward.

   Bren rose up on one knee and pulled two arrows free. She nocked them both and let them fly. One hit the lead man square in the center of his chest. It sank in, but not as deeply as she had hoped. Whatever armor the man was wearing beneath his shirt kept the wound from being a fatal one.

   The second arrow had more luck, whistling past the first man’s face and sinking deep into the right eye of the swordsman behind him. He dropped like a stone, tripping up two others running behind him. Bren felt nothing, she wouldn’t until later. She simply pulled another arrow and fired it.

   Korkarin and Andigar were up and running towards the fight. The arrow sailed between them and hit the lead man in the foot, sending him sprawling. Whatever he had been wearing that stopped the arrow wasn’t enough to protect him from the baunkar’s axe when it came crashing down.

   “Mathias, who the hell are these people?” she snapped.

   “I have no idea! I was about to ask you the same thing.” Shadows surrounded Kolter’s wrists and ankles once more, but there were few places he would be able to jump to with the sun rising. He took a few steps back and eyed the frantic mounts.

   “Don’t you even think about it,” Bren said.

   She dropped her bow and drew a short knife as one of the swordsmen reached her. She dodged back from a swipe that would have taken her nose and blocked a return strike with her own blade. The man’s strength drove her back several steps. Bren bared her teeth and waved him in to engage again.
   Tal Korkarin’s sword deflected a thrust as one of their surprise attackers ran past him. He spared a glance to make sure he wasn’t in danger of any further strikes from behind; the assailant kept moving, bee-lining for Mathias Kolter.

   Interesting, he thought. Maybe they weren’t with the nuisance after all.

   He and Andigar were left with six violent, angry humans. They remained quiet still – save for grunts of exertion – giving no possible motive for the sudden conflict. Were these the ones responsible for the massacre? Were they trying to cover their tracks again by killing them now?

   Two blades came at him at once. He dipped his head to the left to avoid one and knocked the other aside with his blade. Something bit into his right thigh and he looked down to find a third man’s weapon digging into it. His teeth ground together as a sudden wave of pain surged through him.

   He slapped away the first man’s saber as it came towards his head once more and then lunged towards the third man, striking before he could fully retract his weapon. Korkarin’s sword punched through the human’s neck. The man spiraled away, dropping his blade and clapping his hands to the wound.

   “Hell,” Korkarin muttered. “This must be hell.”

   Trying to avoid the pain in his leg, the captain backed away in a circle, battling both men as best as he could. A quick slash opened up the back of his hand. Another tore open his left shoulder. He was scoring hits of his own, but his leg was growing numb. He would have to find an opportunity soon.
   “No, no. No no no.”

   Kolter never considered himself to be much of a fighter. He was a talker. He liked to talk. He was good at it. Sure, he would find occasion to throw a punch here and there. He even owned a knife that he had woefully left behind with his dead horse, so hurried he had been to catch up with the sultani. Still, he preferred trading verbal barbs to steel ones.

   When the other human broke away from the group after failing to land a hit on Korkarin, he charged towards Kolter instead. Tired, terrified, unarmed Kolter. Unarmed, but not defenseless.

   He wasn’t ashamed to run away from the swirling saber while he didn’t have something of his own to swing. The shadows cloaking his ankles swirled turbulently and he came out of the shade on the western side of the path. It was an effective evasive maneuver, but it only fooled the other man for a second.

   The human turned back towards Kolter, the latter stuck with no further place to run. The saber cut through the air with a soft whistle and slammed into Kolter’s side. A pale yellow flash sparked from a ring on his finger; the strike broke a couple ribs from the force but failed to cut flesh. The two men stared at each other.

   “You’ve got to love daevas, huh?” Kolter croaked before catching a fist to the face.

   The only thing keeping him upright while being pummeled was the canyon wall at his back. Each blow wore his daeva-infused armor down more. It came as a shock when the edge of his attacker’s blade finally broke through and cut a line across his forehead. It was even more shocking when the weapon was being pushed into his belly.

   Kolter flicked both of his hands up and outwards desperately. Blue sparks of force slammed into the other man’s face, breaking his nose and pushing him back. Kolter grabbed for the nearest loose stone and slammed it into the side of his adversary’s head until the man stopped moving.

   He was able to stay up close to thirty seconds longer than his foe. The pain in his belly grew harsher as he moved, so he staggered over to a large rock and sank down onto it. He pressed his hands to his abdomen and looked at the rest of the canyon.

   Korkarin was leaking heavily from a number of wounds but somehow was able to hold his own against the pair of men, despite their best efforts to wear him down. Bren had taken a slice high up on her breastbone, but her enemy was growing frustrated. As he watched, Andigar’s neck and shoulders grew translucent red scales. He held off two opponents by breathing fire in their direction. He swung and drove the spike on his axe into the chest of the third man facing him.

   It was so hot out. Fire seemed unnecessary. Kolter pressed his belly more tightly and sighed.
   The baunkar’s arms were wreathed in brilliant ivory bands, the same enhancement he had unleashed back in Mekan. He drove both of his living opponents back with powerful swings of his axe. Any attempts at flanking him were deterred by the tusks extending from his elbows.

   He barely saw them. He didn’t feel the injuries being cut into him. He just acted, attacked. He was violence. He was wrath.

   Andigar kicked one of his stocky legs into the pelvic bone of the man to his left. To the right, he used his axe and increased strength to shatter the curved blade of his other enemy. His own hands became empty. They grabbed the human by the shirt and shoved him to the ground. He began punching. Over and over, he struck. His ivory bands began to turn crimson.
   She didn’t see the knife. She wasn’t even aware he had drawn a second weapon until it was thrust between two of her lower ribs. Bren hissed and brought her elbow across to collide hard into the human’s chin. He fell off balance just enough for her to bring her sword back in a move that took the man’s head from his shoulders.

   Her hand found its way to the hilt in her side, but she didn’t remove it. That would be worse than keeping it in for the time being, no matter how it was grinding against the bone. Instead, she dropped her sword and retrieved her bow and quiver.

   Bren saw Kolter sitting on a rock, injured but alive and out of immediate danger. With effort, she adjusted to see the others. Darian Andigar was in one of his blood-rages. He wasn’t paying attention the man closing on him with wicked intent.

   “Arkhiang!” she yelled. Pivot.

   Andigar’s head snapped up and he stepped away to the right. The human creeping up on him missed his attack and stepped directly into the flight path of Bren’s arrow. She nodded approval at her own success and then turned to Korkarin’s ongoing battle.
   His arms were growing tired and his head was growing light. As the sun rose, the heat grew and it beat at him as relentlessly as the two thick-nosed humans. Sweat or blood rolled down just about every part of his body and he was finding it more and more difficult to spot openings where he could strike.

   Korkarin parried two more swipes but caught the tip of a blade to the chest. The man on his right stepped forward to seize on the flinch when two arrows caught him in the face and neck. The sultani captain capitalized on the surprise and ran through the last man standing. The human gasped – the most he had expressed himself since the attack started – and collapsed.

   No men remained, save for the one he had dragged along on his mission. Korkarin dropped his sword from tired hands. It stuck in the sand at a crooked angle, slick with red. He could see Bren on her knees. She had dropped her bow and sat with her hands turned upwards on her knees. She had her head tilted back towards the sky, breathing heavily in the aftermath of the fight.

   Korkarin shuffled over to a large rock across from Kolter and took a seat. He didn’t see Andigar, but his head was swimming too much for him to make a conscious effort to find him. The canyon walls seemed darker, but he chalked it up to his vision fading. The mounts… the mounts had gone, frightened off in the melee. Without a human to guide them through the paths, he suspected they would wind up lost and starving and dehydrated, just like them.

   He reached for his waterskin and found it empty, the contents having spilled out through a gaping hole in the side. He sighed and tossed it off to the side. Kolter let out a raspy laugh from where he was sitting.

   “What’s so funny?” Korkarin asked.

   “The water. Of all the things that could have been stabbed: your face, your heart, your lungs… you make it through all of that and the most devastating thrust is through the damn water.”

   “I fail to see…” The captain trailed off. Something about this was eerily familiar, but he couldn’t place the memory.

   “Brother, there isn’t any reason to greet the Reaper with a sour puss, if that’s what’s meant to be. Personally, I’m just hoping the afterlife has some ice.”

   A shadow on the ground caught his attention. Korkarin’s eyes tracked upwards to find the source until they reached the top of the valley. A figure stood atop, looking at them. It almost looked like a hariq, though the sun made it difficult to see any tattoos. After a long pause, the figure turned and walked away.

   The captain didn’t even know if what he saw was real. He had heard of mirages, illusions caused by the desert heat. The same intolerable temperature was sapping even more strength from him. His eyelids were getting heavy, and he wanted badly to take a nap. Who would judge him for a quick nap? He had fought so hard.

   As his chin dropped to his chest, he could swear that somewhere in the distance came the chiming of bells.

******************

So that was basically it. I wanted to end the first part on a cliffhanger to encourage people to want to pick up the second part. That part would begin with a group of gamla (basically nomadic camel people) stumbling across the group and nursing them back to health. One gamla leaves his tribe to journey with them, having found their mission to be worthy of going out and earning his True Name. He is immediately drawn to Andigar as the gamla – a person of peace – wants to help the baunkar find stability with the raging daeva he is host to.

Once they’re healed enough to travel, they head to an ever-shifting merchant city. Humans in this world do not have a particularly powerful culture and no capital cities like the solari (basically elves) or the baunkar (basically dwarves, who have carved out Roman-raquel cities in the mountains), so they’re resigned to making themselves useful in other ways, such as merchants, bodyguards, fools, or advisors. So the group finds themselves in this market and after asking around for information sources, they track down a suqur. The suqur are basically hawk-people, typically elegant, and I thought it would be awesome if this particular one – who hoards secrets and information and items of great worth – be obese, just a fat bird dude living life to the fullest.

This baron of sorts tells the group that the second village they were planning on visiting has been wiped out, razed to the ground. He’s still hiding information, and either refuses to divulge it or will only tell them if they pay an exorbitant price. Having been nearly killed in the mountain range, they have nothing and so they leave. Except Kolter notices an object (maybe something capable of a degree of divination) in the suqur’s tent and swipes it. The suqur notices its absence and sends people after them; the group escapes and Kolter admits the theft to Korkarin who nearly beats the shit out of him, but upon using the object, they get hints to head out to the mountain city of the baunkar.

The baunkar have a caste system of sorts with religious heads being top tier, but while they worship essentially ridiculously powerful, ancient daevas, daevics (those in a symbiotic relationship with a daeva) are persona non grata, which means Andigar isn’t exactly having a great time. The baunkar treat Korkarin and Bren fairly enough but keep them at a distance. The gamla notices this and recruits Kolter – who is hesitant after his previous experience with Korkarin – to figure out what it they’re hiding: evidence of collusion between the baunkar and the sobek (the gator people from the prologue, including the main antagonist) in building a massive war machine. The sobek steal the metal, the baunkar design and help build the parts.

Before the group can leave and warn the Singer of the Sands, the hariq (the secondary antagonist) arrives with a sobek retinue and combat breaks out during which the hariq reveals he can use arcane magic without daeva help our hindrance! They fight, the sobek are killed, the hariq is badly wounded, and the group escapes from the pursuing baunkar through tunnels those baunkar won’t or havent explored. Turns out they’re filled with horrible giant insect things with poison blood. They engage in a fighting retreat during which Korkarin is blinded by blood splashed into his eyes. They eventually reach a drop into a river (which has been done a thousand times, fucking sue me, there’s a reason this was never written). They jump.

They wash up quite a way down the river onto a mossy bed. They’re tired and beat up , and Bren tries to treat Korkarin’s eyes, which are right fucked, but it somehow awakened a daeva-enhanced secondary sight, tying in with the dreams and visions he’s been having. They realize they’re closer to the sobek than they are the Sultanate and decide collectively to try and sabotage the war machine. Kolter uses his tricks to help disguise them, but two sultani, a human, a baunkar, and a gamla are difficult to hide in a large group of gator people and they’re discovered

It is entirely due to daevic abilities and magic items that they’re able to hold off the army as long as they do, with Bren and Andigar heading straight for Graxxus. Korkarin, blind though he is, uses his newfound abilities to infiltrate and decimate the war machine with explosions. It costs him his life. Andigar – working with his daeva as opposed to Graxxus who has essentially let his take over- kills the sobek leader but loses an arm in the process. Kolter, Bren, Andigar and the gamla prepare to be overwhelmed and killed when Graxxus’ second-hand warrior stops them. Yes, Graxxus reunited the warring sobek clans, and yes, he had grand ideas but conquest had become too large a focus, and his unpredictable fits of rage and violence while he struggled with his daeva didn’t inspire many. The sobek allows the group to leave on the condition that Bren negotiates a trade arrangement with the sobek and tells them that they deliberately ceased an attack under their new, more stable leadership. She agrees, and the group leaves, taking Korkarin’s body home for a proper funeral.

There would have been some additional segments more fully fleshing out Graxxus and making him more sympathetic and nuanced, but… Yeah, there ya go. Hope you enjoyed.

A Captain’s Duty Part Three

This is the continuation of a fantasy project I was commissioned for not only didn’t get picked up but that I hated writing from the first word, outside some details. I’m going to level with you: I haven’t read it since I finished it, and that was two and a half years ago, so I don’t even remember much of what’s here. Anyway, you can find the earlier entries at A Captain’s Duty Part One and A Captain’s Duty Part Two.
Chapter Three:

Steps Forward
   The air smelled of citrus. Oranges, specifically, though he couldn’t place the region. It hung around them, clung to their clothes, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It served to mask the pungent smell of kraga grass, though the second-hand effects from the smoke weren’t at all diminished.

   He squinted through the haze, ignoring the voluminous figure in front of him in order to take in the interior of the tent. The walls were alternating patches of red and bruise-purple, not that they were easy to see. Tables and crates were piled high with riches and artifacts of all kinds. Piles of elaborate finery were heaped messily on the floor and the occasional chest. Ornaments dangled from the coned ceiling; he had seen plenty of the gamla dream-snares before, though he had never laid eyes on any of the nomads who made them before leaving Mekan.

   “You can’t possibly keep track of everything here. Aren’t you worried about any of this stuff going missing?”

   “I’ve got four guards outside and two in here,” said the figure splayed out on his sea of cushions. “Who’s going to take something? You, sultani? This is the closest thing humans have to a real city, and they’re making the most of it. Anyone with pointed ears would find themselves in a precarious situation should I give so much as a whistle.”

   “That’s quite the influence. You said this was the human’s city, such as it is. What gives you so much authority?”

   “If you want power over people, Captain, you have to have what they want. I have everything. Everything, including the most important commodity of all.”

   “And that is?” he asked impatiently. His head felt light from the kraga smoke.

   “It’s the one thing everyone can use, of course: I have information.”
   His eyes opened to the stars above. A deep breath pulled in through his nostrils and swelled his lungs. He stayed like that for several heartbeats and then pushed himself up into a sitting position.

   Darian Andigar sat on the opposite side of a dying fire. He broke sticks in half between his thick, calloused fingers and tossed the pieces into the smoldering red. His eyes were shadowed. They looked right through him.

    “Does your whole friendly little mercenary band have problems with watching people sleep, or is it just you and Bren?” Korkarin asked.

   “It looked like you weren’t sleeping too good, Captain. ‘scuse me for being concerned.”

   “It’s well. I wasn’t sleeping well.”

   “I was always better with my hands than my words.”

   Korkarin grunted as he pulled himself free from his sleeping roll. Bren still lay prone in her own nearby, back turned to both of them. He could make out her soft snoring. Andigar pointed to her and the unconscious Kolter and put a finger to his lips.

   “Quiet, huh? I don’t remember her being such a light sleeper.”

   “Used to sleep together, did you?” Andigar grinned.

   The captain scowled back. “Not like that. We used to camp when we were younger. Back before…”

   “Before you got a stick lodged?” Andigar laughed and when Korkarin looked fit to snap, he waved the man’s anger down. “I’m just playing, Captain. Bren, she keeps to herself most of the time. She likes to joke around with us guys. She likes to fight occasionally, too. She’s a scrapper, that one. But talk? She prefers everyone else’s stories. She likes to hear about everyone else’s lives, keeps us together that way. When she does talk, though, rare as it is, you usually pop up somewhere in there.”

   Korkarin said nothing to that. He scooted closer to the dimming fire and moved the remains of the rabbits Bren had shot for dinner out of the way. He held his hands over the embers to warm them.

   “I don’t think she mentioned you by name,” Andigar continued. “Or if she did, I missed it. She definitely didn’t say you were a city guard, though she’d drop hints at connections in Mekan. You could tell, though, from what little she did drop that your friendship was something important to her.”

   “You can go to sleep, Darian. I’ll take my shift from here.”

   “Ain’t your shift, Captain. Not for a couple hours yet. Your nightmares woke you early.”

   “Then it’s your lucky day. Take advantage of the extra rest.”

   “I ain’t tired, neither.”

   Andigar leaned into the fire and blew softly, coaxing a little more life into the pit. Korkarin sighed and rubbed at his eyes. The last few dreams he’d had refused to fade away peacefully, and they were making him irritable.

   The first day’s ride had come and gone without incident. The captain had resisted looking back at Mekan when they departed, though his companions had assured him no one was following. That didn’t mean an ambush didn’t still lay ahead, but they were outside of the city now: nothing prohibited his use of daevas out here. He knew the baunkar had a relationship with the spirits as well, and Bren was a capable fighter in her own ways. That should have put him at ease. It did for a while. All it took was one more weird dream to get under his skin.

   “She ain’t, by the way,” Andigar said softly.

   “Huh?” The comment snapped Korkarin back to their cramped little camp.

   “A light sleeper. Bren ain’t one. Us mercs, we’re on the road a lot. We’re in the middle of a fight more often than night. You don’t know when you’re going to be getting your next rest, so when you can nap, you nap hard. The body does the rest. The right word cuts through that, though, pulls them back awake in an instant. I’d tell you what the words are, but…” He nodded over to her sleeping form.

   “Right. Tell me later. What about you? Are there different words for you?”

   Andigar smirked, though the mirth he had shown earlier seemed to have disappeared. He looked down at his hands. “Nah. I ain’t got any words, Captain. I always sleep light as a feather.”

   The fire crackled loudly as an ember found something to feast on. No further words were shared between them.”
   Trome wasn’t remarkable by way of appearance. It was a small village of hundreds, the kind where everyone knew each other. It was good when everyone got along and bad when a feud developed, the latter often leading to someone finding a new little town to start up in.

   The land was mostly barren when riding down from the north or in from the west. To the south and the east, however, the area was dense with rice paddies. Vegetable gardens existed in large quantities, but these were tucked between the boxing homes that made up the village.

   It was the paddy fields that were the most noteworthy thing about Trome, the thing that caught the attention of Mekan’s leader. Rumor had it that they added something to the waters in order to bring out the unique flavors that made their rice so desired. Rumor also had it that herbs and spices were packed into the submerged soil or that daevas were involved somehow. Only the villagers knew the truth behind the secret, and as it was a truth passed down through generation after generation, it was guarded fiercely. Attempts by visitors to find out were blocked at every turn. Even those that had been driven away refused to betray the prized recipe of their ancestors.

   According to all of Korkarin’s sources, though the villagers of Trome were firm in their ways, they were also remarkably friendly. It struck him as odd that as he and his companions rode into the main avenue that cut through the village, not a single sultani came out to greet them.

   Korkarin and Andigar held their reins in one hand and placed their free hands on their weapons. Bren dropped her reins completely and pulled her bow. She nocked an arrow but didn’t draw it back. Her eyes found Korkarin’s and the captain gestured for her to keep an eye on the spaces between the buildings.

   “Hello?” he called. “Citizens of Trome? We come bearing greetings from Mekan!”

   “Tal,” Bren said quietly.

   She left the question unspoken and he acknowledged it the same way, pointing towards one of the houses on the right. Andigar moved to the left with like intention while the captain stayed in the middle of the road. There was no movement either ahead or behind them. There were no sounds.

   Bren hooked her bow over her arm and drew her sword. With her left hand, she tried the door to the home. It was unlocked. Carefully, she pushed it open and leaned inside, leading with the blade’s tip.

   “Anyone home?” she called.

   The living room was empty. A chair lay on the floor with one leg cracked nearly all the way through. Two plates were broken next to it, the food that had been piled atop them, now smeared and rotting across the floorboards. Two other abandoned meals still sat atop the dining room table. A nearby hearth was filled with dark ash, the fuel for the flames having been consumed entirely.

   She stepped carefully through the rest of the house, poking her head into the different rooms. There were no bodies, living or otherwise, though she saw several dried, rust-colored droplets that indicated at least one person hadn’t left easily.

   With little else to go on, she exited the house and closed it behind her. She scratched a small ‘D’ into the frame to mark it as searched in case they were to perform a more thorough inspection through the town. She turned just as Andigar was finishing his own mark. Korkarin looked at her for answers.

   “It’s empty,” she said. “There are signs of a struggle. Some blood, dried. No bodies, though. Whatever happened did so a while ago. The food is spoiled. Several days, maybe as much as a couple weeks.”

   “Same on my end,” Andigar said. “Didn’t see no food or blood, but there are plenty of things smashed all to hell.”

   Korkarin dismounted and drew his own sword. Bren sheathed hers but pulled and armed her bow once more. Andigar held an axe, one side curved with a thick, polished edge. The other side held a stout spike sharpened to a wicked point.

   As one, they moved through the streets. Their mounts followed dutifully behind; they kept the beasts close in case a hasty retreat was necessary. Still, no one came. Still, the only sounds were the scuff off their feet and the soft clop of hooves.

   Andigar pointed out several details as they walked. Smithing hammers dropped away from their anvils. A child’s doll covered in mud at the side of the road. Several deep grooves leading away from the homes, towards the paddies.

   A powerful smell began to assault them as they neared. It was musty and reeked of spoiled meat. The air above the field was thick with flies and weevils, creating a soft roar as they worked at satisfying their insatiable hunger. At the forefront of the crop, a trench had been dug. It was long and deep and the cloud of bugs was thickest in and around it.

   “Stay here,” Korkarin told the others.

   Bren complied, keeping watch. Andigar ignored the order and walked to the pit beside the sultani captain. They both had an idea of what they would find. It didn’t make it any easier to actually see it.

   “Reaper’s breath,” Andigar gasped. A pressure swelled in his chest and pounded behind his eyes. His hands tightened around his axe.

   Bodies were stacked upon bodies, hundreds of them in varying states of decay. Their clothes were torn and soiled, though it was hard to pinpoint which holes had come from weapons and which had ripped open from being dropped in the cold, wet ditch. It didn’t matter what had killed them in the end. The result was the same: far too many bodies, in all shapes and sizes. Bodies that came far too small in some cases.

   “What is it, Tal?”

   “It’s-” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and turned away. “It’s them. It’s the village.”

   Bren let his words wash over her like a coat of ice. “Even the-”

   “It’s all of them, lass,” Andigar snapped. “Every last one.”

   “By the Ebb,” she said. “Those poor babies.”

   “There isn’t anything that can be done for them now,” Korkarin said. “The paddy field is ruined. Murdering an entire village seems excessive just to keep the grain from the Singer’s mouth. This is a much more serious message.”

   Andigar huffed in frustration. “From who? Saying what?”

   “That’s the question, isn’t it? We’ve still got some light left, so let’s see if we can drum up an idea of what the real goal was. Maybe they left some equipment behind. Maybe we missed some kind of note.”

   “Maybe they ain’t trying to be figured out, Captain,” the baunkar said. “Maybe they didn’t leave no note.”

   “It might be that’s the case. If so, tomorrow we’ll start heading east. Wrane is several day’s travel from here and we’ll want to get there as quickly as possible in case they’re being targeted as well.”

   Korkarin’s horse whinnied and stomped its front hooves. Bren transferred her bow and arrow to one hand and grabbed the mount’s reins in the other. The beast shook its head in dismay.

   “What’s wrong with your horse?” she asked.

   “I’m not sure. Something’s upsetting her.”

    “We’re all upset, Captain,” Andigar pointed out. “There’s a bleedin’ mass grave right there.”

   “No, it’s got to be something else. She only gets upset around…” He narrowed his eyes at Andigar. The baunkar noticed and narrowed his eyes right back.

   “Around what, Korkarin? Your animal has been just fine around me since we set out.”

   “Are you using a daeva right now?”

   “What purpose do I have for-”

   “Be honest with him, Darian,” Bren said.

   “I am being honest with him, blast it. My daeva ain’t exactly-”

   “Then we’re not alone,” Korkarin interrupted. He turned away from the bodies and began to scan the houses he had thought empty.

   Shadows seemed to flicker at the edges of the buildings, in the open space between them. It started back near the entrance to Trome and worked its way closer. The pattern was unpredictable, sometimes moving in a straight row down only to suddenly appear across the street. The faintest outline of a body could be seen in the midst of the swirling darkness.

   Korkarin’s head moved in an almost imperceptible nod. Bren’s arm pulled back swiftly. Her fingers released the bowstring and the arrow flew free into the shadows. A loud curse rang through the air and a single man stepped into sight, one hand half-raised and the other clutching at the thin cut the arrow had sliced into his shoulder.

   “Whoa! Hey, hold on. Hold on, I’m not here for trouble.”

   “Human,” Bren sneered.

   “If you’re not here for trouble, why didn’t you approach in plain sight?” Korkarin asked.

   “Using the shadows is quicker. The page back in Mekan sold me a sick horse. Damn thing died three-quarters of the way here and it’s been hell trying to catch up since. He sighed and muttered, “I knew I should’ve waited for the stablemaster.”

   Andigar stepped forward briskly and slammed the haft of his axe into the center of the man’s chest. The stranger hit the ground with a wheeze and took his hand away from his wound long enough to beg the baunkar off. Andigar’s nostrils flared.

   “Who are you with? Why are you following us?”

   “I’m not with anyone, I swear! As far as I know, I’m the only one who lit out after you.” He glanced around and his forehead creased in confusion. “Where is everyone?”

   “Never mind that,” Korkarin said. “Answer Darian’s question.”

   “I told you, I’m not… look, my name is Mathias Kolter. Frankly, Captain, I’m here because of you. I want to offer my services to you to utilize however you wish in order to best benefit your career.”

   Bren snorted. Korkarin shot her an annoyed look.

   “Bind him,” he said.

   “Wait, that’s not necessary,” Kolter said. “I’m unarmed.”

 “Bind him anyway.” Korkarin shook his head and muttered, “Came after me for a job. Unbelievable.”

   “I can help!” the human protested.

   “Gag him, too. Darian, start searching houses again.”

   Andigar didn’t move until Bren had circled behind Kolter and prepared a coil of rope. The human sighed and placed his hands behind his back.
   Viskar sat with her legs crossed and her tail wrapped around her. Her hands rested on her knees, turned upwards. A thin, milky membrane covered her eyes, enough to keep them moisturized, not enough to keep the light of the candles fully out. Dozens of the waxen objects surrounded her, thin flames dancing with a carelessness that escaped her.

   Gnash. Tear. Crush. Grind.

   She couldn’t feel the heat from the flames. Not through her thick hide. Not with the daeva pressing up against her ribcage. It screamed in her mind. It begged to be released. She promised it would be soon. IN the meantime, all she wanted was a moment of peace.

   Bring them to their knees. Drive them forward. Make them crawl. Make them beg.

   The shrine to the Eroder was simple, a marble pedestal that started slim at the bottom and gradually grew wider as it rose. The powerful daeva’s symbol – a thin crescent laying on its rounded side – was carved into the surface.

   Viskar had always found a greater connection with the Eroder than any of the other major daevas. The Constant was far too passive for her tastes. It didn’t match her vision for the future. Erosion was equally inevitable but far more commanding. It was a force of nature. Something to be respected. Something to be feared.

   Break it away. Waste it away. Wear it away.

   “No,” she whispered through her teeth.

   Hers was a metaphorical erosion. A tearing away of the societal constructs that had kept her people at each other’s throats for hundreds of years. Land disputes and blood feuds. Resource wars and sport killing. Of course none of the other races respected the sobek. Why should they when the sobek tribes didn’t even respect each other.

   Until her. Until Viskar united them and resurrected the title of Nebkha. Her power was unmatched. Her ferocity unrivaled. She would usher in a new era of peace, prosperity and recognition for her race unlike anything that had come before.

   Yet even as she visualized tranquility for the sobek, for her sister Garrix and herself…even as she saw brighter days and bluer skies, she pictured skulls filled with blood and turbulent airs filled with the wails of the dying. She envisioned viscera dripping from her hands.

   Beat them. Bleed them. Slay them.

   The daeva inside her gripped at her heart. It kicked at her stomach. It plucked at every nerve from the base of her neck to the tip of her tail. She took a deep breath and tried to calm it, or at least push it down. Her hands clenched, her nails biting into the skin of her palms. She closed her main eyelids to block out the light, uttered a soft prayer and let her hands open one more.
   In the few hours that remained before the sun tucked in under the horizon, their search yielded few results, none of which were answers. They found peculiarities instead. Many of the homes had fireplaces, but the tools for them were nowhere to be found. Some places had been thoroughly looted while others had jewelry and other valuable strewn about. The crops were ruined in full. The buildings were largely untouched, save for a handful that had had their sidings stripped. There were no messages of intent nor any list of demands. It seemed to them to be mindless slaughter for the sake of it.

   Once darkness fell, the group reconvened and led Kolter and their mounts to a stable they had discovered near the outer edge of town. To their relief, there were no dead animals waiting for them. Whether they had been taken by whoever had laid waste to the village or had managed to escape on their own, they had left the stalls empty. The horses and Andigar’s pony found spaces of their own to relax and some left over grain to feed on. The rest of them bunched into a large stall at the end.

   Bren passed out dried fruit and nuts to Andigar and Korkarin. The latter fixed Mathias Kolter with calculating eyes. Kolter, for his part, had stayed quiet at the mention of a gag, though his arms had grown increasingly comfortable from the long hours of being bound. With tremendous reluctance, Korkarin unfastened the rope around the human’s wrists.

   “Thank you, Tal. Er, Captain, I mean,” Kolter said. He rubbed at the red marks the rope had left. “That feels much better.” He eyed the food with a hungry glint in his eye. “Do you think… you think I could maybe get a bite or two to eat? Just one bite would be fine.”

   “When’s the last time you ate?” Bren asked.

   “I finished off the rest of my bread yesterday afternoon.”

   “Then, no. You’ll live.”

   Andigar smirked and popped a slice of dried peach in his mouth. Kolter scowled at the baunkar in return but knew to argue was to continue a fight he would never win. He opted to change the subject instead.

   “Must we sleep out here? It smells atrocious.”

   “It’s a stable,” Andigar said.

   “I had managed to piece that together via an assortment of context clues, thank you. What I meant to say is that there are several perfectly good, perfectly warm, unoccupied houses we could be using instead.”

   “None of us are sleeping in a dead man’s house,” Korkarin said. “If you’re cold, tuck yourself under some of that hay.”

   “Or we could set him on fire,” Bren suggested.

   “Or we could set you on fire,” Korkarin said to Kolter.

   “It would keep the rest of us warm,” Andigar added.

   The human grumbled, “I prefer myself flameless. I’ll… see what I can do with the hay.”

   “Tal, what are we going to do with this guy?” Bren asked. “We can’t just drag him along with us. He’s a hindrance as it is, and I don’t trust him.”

   Andigar grunted. “We could ki-”

   Korkarin cut him off. “We’re not going to kill him. We’ll leave Mister Drunk and Disorderly here in the morning. For now, the three of us will take up watch shifts, same as usual.”

   Kolter perked up at that. “Hold on, you know who I am?”

   “It took me a bit to place you, but I remember you now. You were the man in the cell when I dropped off that boat thief. If your idea was really to track me down so I would use your services, you had to know that I would take a look at your record sooner or later when we got back to Mekan. What made you think this was actually going to work?”

   “I was only drunk and disorderly! That’s nothing!”

   “Assault was on your charge sheet, too, I recall.”

   “Those charges were dropped,” Kolter said. “I’ve never done anything but get by. Yeah, I’ve made a mistake or two, but you’re going to tell me you’ve never made a mistake in your life?”

   “I’ve never spent time in jail for my mistakes.”

   The human had a sharp retort itching to leap from his tongue, but he held it in check. Bren settled down onto her side and turned so her back faced the group. Andigar frowned in thought.

   “Captain?”

   “Darian.”

   “We don’t have time to take the human back to Mekan if we want to get to Wrane in a timely manner, and he ain’t exactly done a crime worth locking him up for anyway. If we don’t kill him, that means leaving him here. If that’s the case, you might consider how he could interpret, you know… the scene.”

   “What scene?” Kolter asked. The lack of mills? It’s strange, I’ll grant you that, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Besides, I can get you to Wrane more quickly if that’s where you’re going next. There isn’t any need to leave me and even less to kill me. I can help you!”

   Korkarin blinked. “Back up. One thing at a time. What did you say about the mills?”

   “There aren’t any. A village like this, with the rice production they’re famous for, it should have at least one mill constructed. Right? Big metal building? Mekan has some grain mills of their own that you’ve probably seen.”

   “I know what a mill is.”

   “So that’s weird, right?”

   Missing tools, missing siding, missing metal buildings,” Andigar mused. “I think I’m starting to get an idea of what they were after.”

   “Yeah, but the bigger question is who would need it? Who would kill every man, woman and child anywhere just to get it?”

   “There’s someone I know of who might be able to help you,” Kolter said. His face was earnest, his hands open. “If you’re going to Wrane, that’s, what, six days away? I know a path that can get us there in half that. On the way, there’s a merchant I can introduce you to. He knows things. He might be able to give you some answers.”

   “Nonsense,” Andigar scoffed. “There’s no passage to Wrane.”

   “Not directly, no. It cuts through the Serpent’s Spine. You could probably find it if you really looked for it. Really looked. Once you’re in though… you’d be traveling blind.”

   “Why haven’t I heard of it?”

   Kolter grinned. “Because you’re not human.”

   “I wake up every morning grateful for it.”

   “Alright, enough,” Korkarin said. “Get some sleep, Darian. I’ll take first watch. Bren’s already knocked out, so I’ll wake her up for the second.”

   “Should I take third or fourth watch, then?” Kolter asked.

   “Neither. You’re who we’re watching. I don’t trust you, Mathias. My suggestion would be to get some sleep. If you’re going to try and give me a reason to keep you alive and along, you’ll want to be rested.”

   Andigar smirked at the human and settled into the corner. Within moments, he was asleep in a seated position, his head nestled between the walls, his arms resting on splayed legs. Kolter followed suit, pulling hay over himself and muttering about the itchiness.

   Tal Korkarin watched until they had all drifted away and then stood to look out over the door of the stall. His knee popped and he considered that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. The sky above was dark and full of pearls. They cast an eerie light over the dead village, like a pack of ghosts or a funeral shroud.

A Captain’s Duty Part Four

A Captain’s Duty Part Two

This is a continuation of a commissioned piece for a role-playing module. My piece was never picked up, which is fine, because I hated it. You can find part one at A Captain’s Duty Part One

Chapter Two:

Preparations
   The Speckled Dragon was a one-story affair with a sign that slumped off the side of the building. It was likely an easy fix – a screw that needed tightening or a support that needed to be nailed back in – but this wasn’t the kind of place that concerned itself with fixing anything more than a lack of impairment.

   Wood chips covered the floor inside. It was unclear whether this was an intentional aesthetic or a byproduct of years of stragglers shuffling their feet through the door. Lanterns hung from the rafters at random intervals but were few enough in number that the tavern felt hours later in the day than the world outside. It cast an almost sinister glow on the forms hunched over their drinks. The brightest spot inside was a crescent-shaped bar in the back corner. The person tending it – human, in a rare occasion – had a fixed smile on his face, like a devil satisfied with the sins he was selling.

   Sultani and humans sat together in here. Korkarin saw a hariq at a table by himself, red tattooed arms crossed over his chest. A low buzzed passed through the room, two dozen mumbled conversations blurring into one.

   “You lying, cheating scum!” broke the monotony.

   The outburst came from a baunkar who had shot to his feet, so forcefully it sent his chair skittering backwards before ultimately overturning. He stood taller than most maadmi but would only come up to mid-torso on a human or sultani. Thick black hair fell off his head into a braid with several jeweled totems woven into it. A few days’ worth of stubble cast a shadow on his cheeks. His eyes blazed with anger.

   “You said you would give me a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. That was the bargain we both agreed upon, by the Prosperous and the Flow. You won’t welch on me now, boy! I won’t allow it!”

   “Calm down, little guy,” said one of three male humans seated at the table. He looked to his companions and smirked. “I appreciate the work, but I got to thinking about it all afterwards. I couldn’t find it in me to figure out a good reason to pay anything to… what do your people call the unclean? You know. I shouldn’t have to pay a chuta like you.”

   The baunkar’s face went blank. Something dark lurked behind his eyes and he stiffened. The others in tavern turned away for a moment, convinced the insult had been so publicly cutting that it would send the stocky man out the door.

   They couldn’t have been more wrong.

   The air sucked in towards the baunkar and seconds later his arms were wrapped in brilliant ivory bands. His elbows curved out into sharp tusks that glowed every bit as bright. His right forearm crashed down onto the surface of the table, shattering it more or less in half. The man who had insulted him now sputtered surprise as he jolted from his seat and backpedaled. His two friends fell aside, stunned.

   At the door, Korkarin swore and stepped forward, hand slapping down on the pommel of his sword. He made it two steps before Bren grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against one of the support pillars.

   “What the hell?” he asked.

   “Don’t, Tal.”

   “It’s against the law to wield veils within city limits, Bren. Let go of me before he really hurts someone.”

   “You heard what that guy called him.”

   “I could give a damn if some baunkar gets his feelings hurt by a little name-calling. He’s breaking the law. How would it look if I just stood by and watched this after the meeting I just had?”

   Bren tightened her grip and kept him against the pillar. “What that human said is more than just name-calling, Tal. You know that. You don’t just sling that word around.”

   Korkarin stopped and glared at his friend. Behind her, he could make out the baunkar punching the man who taunted him and immediately pivoting to headbutt one of his companions. The patrons that had been eating and drinking around them simply picked up their plates and mugs and made room for the fight.

   “What do you care?” he asked Bren.

   “I care because that’s the guy we’re here to bring along with us.”

   Korkarin froze and shot a look over to the baunkar. He had one hand wrapped the human’s throat, pinning him up against the wall. Korkarin turned back to Bren.

   “No way. Not a chance.”

   Bren scowled. “Don’t be like that, Tal. He’s good people.”

   “You said he had a temper problem. You didn’t say he was unhinged. He’s beating in the faces of restaurant customers in public with an illegal use of veils. I can’t not step in.”

   “Okay. Fine, but will you trust me enough to do this my way?”

   It was Korkarin’s turn to make a face. “I’m sure we can find a middle ground.”
   Darian Andigar was only peripherally aware of what he was doing. He could see the drops of blood flinging away from the man’s lips and nose each time his hand pulled back but he was unable to feel his own knuckles. There should have been some kind of sensation. A throbbing from the impacts. Pain, maybe, from catching the skin of his fingers on the man’s teeth, or a broken bone from landing a punch poorly.

   Instead, there was nothing. His arms glowed white. He recognized the veil. It was one he used often in the thick of battle whenever he was out of the city on a job. But he wasn’t on a job now. He wasn’t even out of the city, was he? So why…

   Something roiled inside his chest and coursed up into his throat and shoulders. His mind drifted to each part of his body. His feet were planted firmly with the left slightly forward in order to center his balance. His ribs heaved with breath. Not the breath of exhaustion, but that of adrenaline. His left hand had moved away from the human’s throat; instead, he crossed the arm across the man’s chest, bracing him against the wall. His right hand had stopped jabbing. It now gripped the man’s chin, forcing it down so the man could look Andigar in the eyes.

   Andigar’s neck was tight with strain and trembled violently as condemnations exploded from him. Heat radiated from his cheeks. His mouth was fixed in a snarl that exposed every one of his crooked teeth. His eyes itched and he looked out from them as one would peer through a window.

   He was angry. Furious, even. The words he yelled were his own, thoughts given liberation, but they contained a hateful fervor that seemed inappropriate. They were words better left unsaid. The thing in his chest twisted down into his stomach and he almost vomited. That sudden shift snapped him back into focus.

   With wide eyes, he stepped back from the man and let him slump to the ground. His arms, tired and sore, dropped to his sides. Unsure, the other two humans he had assaulted moved in to check on their friend. A buzzing in his ears gave way to someone’s shouted voice.

   “Darian Andigar! I say again, step away from those men and drop your veil!”

   The baunkar turned and saw two sultani approaching him. One, he recognized. Bren Dendalion wore a worried expression on her face as she walked towards him. Her hands flicked together in a series of patterns he recognized from reconnaissance duties.

   Relax, friend, she was saying. Cooperate and it will be okay.

   He flicked his eyes to the other one. He was a stern-looking male dressed in red with a Captain’s Crest pinned to his lapel and his hand gripping the hilt of a curved saber. Andigar released the veil around his arms; the ivory hue quickly faded back into nothingness.

   There was no resistance as Bren bound his arms behind him at the wrist. The other sultani checked to make sure none of the humans were seriously maimed or worse, then fished a folded paper from one of his pockets and placed it on the bar.

   “That’s a form requesting formal recompense from the Sultanate for the damages incurred to your establishment during the course of an official investigation. You have fourteen days to file it. On day fifteen, the form expires and the Sultanate will not be held liable for any repairs or compensation to you or this business. You’ll be out of luck. Do you understand?”

   “Uh, yeah…”

   The captain nodded. “Good. Fourteen days.”

   He returned to the baunkar and took one of his arms. Bren took the other and together, they led their prisoner to the exit. Andigar made no eye contact with either of them as he walked. He didn’t raise his head at all.
   The evening air was cool on their faces as they left the tavern, a relief from the musk that had lingered inside. Overhead, the sky was turning from blue to purple, frayed at the edges with reds and oranges as the sun crept down the horizon. Korkarin paid no mind; he was focused on steering the baunkar from behind, one hand gripped tightly around Andigar’s upper left arm.

   “Where are you going, Tal?” Bren asked.

   “Away from the Dragon,” he muttered back. “I’ve got to at least make it look like I’m doing my job.”

   “You might be the only guard who actually worries about keeping up appearances. Look, Darian is a good guy. You don’t have to jerk him around so much.”

   Korkarin said nothing. He pushed Andigar through a group of humans dressed in their finest clothing, ignoring their compliments and shaking his head so they knew that no, he did not have a second to talk about the future or anything else they were selling.

   “Tal,” Bren hissed.

   “What?” Korkarin snapped back. He stopped short, pulling back a little too tightly on the bindings around the baunkar’s wrists. Andigar grunted but said nothing.

   Bren came up close and spoke in a tight tone just loud enough for the other sultani to hear. “Darian is my friend. He has been a trusted friend for several years and I owe him my life several times over. You told me you trusted me, and I led you to him because he’s the one I trust enough to help you, too. Don’t be so rough on him. He came with you without giving you any trouble.”

   “If you hadn’t been there or it hadn’t been us who arrived, he very well could have killed that man. Or multiple men. Even if he hadn’t, unleashing veils in Mekan is illegal for anyone but city guards. Even for us, it’s a last resort.”

   “But it was us who showed up, and he did stop when we told him to.” Bren put her hand on Korkarin’s chest. “Friend to friend, you and me… you know I’m not lying when I tell you Darian is of better use to you by your side when we leave Mekan than he would be in a cell for roughing up some human that had it coming.”

   Korkarin looked down at her hand and then back to her purple eyes. Purple. Only ten percent of sultani had a color other than silver. It had been the topic of the conversation that started their friendship so many years ago. He sighed and felt some of the tension leave him.

   “Alright,” he said with a nod. He nudged Andigar forward. “Up here. We’re going left, down the alley.”

   The passage wasn’t far, nor was it occupied when they entered it. Tal pulled a small knife free from his belt and cut through the baunkar’s bindings. Andigar rubbed at his wrists and turned to face the two sultani. He kept his expression humble.

   “Much appreciated,” he said. “So. You’re a friend of Bren’s?”

   “My oldest friend,” Bren answered instead. “This is Captain Tal Korkarin of Mekan’s, uh, esteemed city guards.”

   Andigar snuffed. “I don’t understand you folks what want to pursue that line of work. You want to get your boots dirty, there’s plenty more freedom in the mercenary life.”

   Korkarin narrowed his eyes. “There wasn’t about to be more freedom. Not for you. It’s only by the grace of my history with Bren that you aren’t in a cell. You travel with her group, so I doubt this is your first time in Mekan. You know what the rules are.”

   The baunkar’s eyes flared for a moment, but the anger failed to take hold and embarrassment rushed to take its place. “Aye, Captain. You’re right. I weren’t myself. I got my demon to wrestle, same as anyone.”

   “If we’re being honest, most do a better job of wrestling it.” Korkarin sized Andigar up. “You don’t much look like the religious type, so I’d say vakla is out.”

   “Then there’s the kamagura, aye. You may know about my culture, Captain, but I’ve a feeling you ain’t know much more than the basics, stuck here in the capital as you are. Killer, priest, worker, or dirt. That’s how the folks back home like to square themselves away as, but it don’t mean much to me anymore. I’m out in the muck and the blood for the coin now, hear?”

   “Alright, boys,” Bren said, stepping between them. “By the Sower, are you done? We breathe the same air, don’t we? If we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, we’re going to have to figure out how to get along.”

   Andigar blinked. “I don’t follow.”

   Korkarin sighed. Bren shushed him. “Tal’s been tasked to look into some missing messengers and delayed shipments.”

   “Shipments of what?”

   “Rice. And, uh…clothes. Some clothing.”

   The baunkar blinked again. “…I still don’t follow, Bren. What part of that concerns me?”

   “It doesn’t,” Korkarin said.

   “Shut up, Tal,” Bren shot back. To Andigar, she said, “After discussing the situation, Tal and I have some theories that this little mission might need a few extra hands. In case something were to happen, you know? If something unexpected were to pop up? You get it.”

   “So get them. He’s a captain, right?”

   Korkarin said nothing.

   “Tal’s method of operation – that being that he follows the law pretty strictly – has left him without a surplus of friends. That’s another reason why sending him alone to investigate feels a little off. I volunteered to go with him on account of our history. I sort of volunteered you, too.”

   “You did what? Why would you do that?”

   “I told him I could trust you to be capable and reliable. We’re short on viable options in that regard. Tal doesn’t have anybody else and all my other friends from growing up are either dead or completely inept. I only know the people in our band and of everyone, you’re the one I put the most stock in.”

   Andigar scowled. “That was a mistake, lass. I’m in it for the money, same as the rest. As I’ve heard no offer from either of you so far, I’m assuming there ain’t none to be had.”

   “There isn’t,” Korkarin said.

   “There you have it, then. Why would I hang my neck out for some sultani I don’t even know?”

   “Because I’ll toss you into a cell if you don’t,” Korkarin muttered under his breath.

   “What was that?”

   “He’s kidding,” Bren said.

   “I’m not kidding.”

   “Don’t listen to him. Darian, please. You know we probably won’t get a good job so soon after getting back. This thing here? It’ll either be completely uneventful and you’ll have a way to kill the time, or maybe something will happen and I’ll need you there. I would like you there.”

   Andigar mulled it over a minute, chewing at the inside of his lip. He glanced over at the captain. “What’s your take on it, then? I ain’t going if you’re going to be hanging a threat over me the entire time.”

   Korkarin shrugged, looked at Bren, looked back at the other man. “I don’t know you, Darian, but your first impression leaves a lot to be desired. Even so, Bren vouches for you. Her word carries a lot of weight with him. I can’t offer you compensation, but if you agree to come… well, I could use an extra pair of eyes.”

   “Hrm.” Andigar rubbed at his temples. “Fine. For Bren, then, for keeping that scene back at the tavern from getting ugly.”

   “Uglier,” she grinned, and they shared a laugh.

   Tal Korkarin swallowed a sigh and checked either end of the alley. A pair of suqur cast curious glances their way as they walked by but said nothing.

   “We need to leave as soon as possible,” the captain said. “Enough time has passed without definitive answers for the Sultanate. The sooner we discover whether or not a threat is present, the better.”

   “Will three people be enough, you think?” Bren asked.

   “It’ll have to be. No offense, but I wouldn’t want to explain why I’ve recruited an entire band of mercenaries to tag along on a mission this important to the Singer.”

   “I can be ready by morning,” Andigar said.

   Korkarin nodded. “Then be so. Bren will collect you in the morning and we’ll depart then. If you can manage a week’s worth of supplies, pack that. If not, or if our sojourn takes longer, the Sultanate will provide for our needs.”

   “In that case, I seem to remember I’ve only three days of goods to bring with me.”

   “Don’t push your luck, Darian,” the captain said.

   Bren pushed past Korkarin and walked Andigar to the end of the alley. She gave him a tight hug. “Thank you,” she said.

   “Your friend’s a real pleasure to be around.”

   “In his defense, you did just almost beat some people to death.”

   Andigar looked at the ground. “Bren…”

   “Shh. I know. Look, don’t let Tal get to you. We’ll get together tomorrow, spend some time on the road. Before long, you two will be friends. He’s just got to get to know you better, and you need to do the same with him. He’s all heart.”

   “I couldn’t give a damn if he likes me, Dendalion. I’m doing this for you. Just see if maybe you can get me some compensation for my time, hmm?”

   She pecked her lips on the top of his head and patted his cheek. “Of course I’ll look after you. I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Get some sleep try not to get into any more fights.”

   Andigar scowled. He looked past her to Tal Korkarin and gave a short nod of respect. The captain returned it and turned away, starting towards the other end of the alley. After a moment, Bren followed. The baunkar watched them go, took a long, deep breath and focused on using it to quell the rage that still, that always burned inside him.

   Sleep, he thought. Right.
   It was tricky for most humans to get anywhere in life without dipping into an unsavory pastime or two at some point. Gambling, thieving, swindling; humans knew how to talk fast and to make that whirlwind proposal sound good. It was either that or spend their whole life on the street. Or worse: if someone couldn’t sell a lie, if they were caught in some kind of con, the consequences could be as severe as exile or some form of dismemberment.

   Getting caught was a dishonest man’s greatest fear. Whether it was by mumble-mouthing a scam or bumbling a pickpocketing or burgling an occupied home, the threat of prison, maiming or death was very real.

   Mathias Kolter wasn’t a dishonest man, though, not exactly. Sure, he knew how to make wool sound like silk and overripe food sound like a healthy alternative to ‘traditional’ diets, but he wasn’t really a liar. Not unless he had to be, which wasn’t always, and that’s what counted.

   He did know liars. He knew thieves. Thieves were the best friends he could have. They were always keen to buy a round or two, even dinner on occasion. They felt compelled to. Too much wealth after fencing a score would begin to look suspicious, so they bled their own coin purses and gained a few new allies in the process.

   Kolter knew the game and how it worked. He would tell a joke, share a story, and after everyone was getting along, he would pass on a juicy tip. Who was an easy mark, which houses were empty while the owners were out of town. He would let him know which areas of the city were being heavily patrolled and which lazy guards were on shift.

   These were honest tips, useful information. After all, getting caught was a dishonest man’s greatest fear and Kolter was a mostly honest man making sure that wouldn’t happen. That made him valuable. It was because of that that he had accrued a number of reliable friends.

   Well, not exactly friends. More like favor-owers. People that were more than happy to cash in their chits by point an arm or dropping a name, whispering a rumor, naming a street. It was a winding, conflicting road that took him most of the day, but he had found Tal Korkarin once again.

   The captain kept curious company. He had seen the man’s attractive friend and their captive baunkar storm out of the Speckled Dragon only to come together like old comrades not long after. He had watched as the three exchanged words, watched them go their separate ways.

   The whole interaction was deeply strange. A sultani hugging a baunkar? Even on its own, it wasn’t a terribly common occurrence in the capital, but coming on the heels of the altercation in the tavern, the whole thing reeked of conspiracy. Tal Korkarin might not be the clean wheel everyone thought he was.

   Kolter just had to know more.
   The sun overhead was dark orange and mocking. The air around him was shimmering from the heat, distorting the weapons that were strewn around haphazardly across the sand. His own sword was sticking out of the ground at an angle, tip down, blade slick with red. Bodies were scattered irregularly; most were still.

   Bren’s face swam in and out of focus. She was on her knees, sitting back on her feet. Her hands were turned upwards, knuckles just touching the ground. She had her head tilted back, eyes on the sky. Andigar was nowhere to be seen, though he may have been one of the bodies. It was hard to tell.

   They were in some kind of canyon with steep walls made of black stone rising up on either side. He was seated uncomfortably on a large, uneven rock, clothes clinging tightly to him with sweat or blood or both. A human sat across from him, back against the canyon wall, legs splayed out before him. He looked vaguely familiar.

   It was so hot. Why was it so hot? He reached for his waterskin and found it lighter than it should have been. He turned it over in his hands, head swimming from dehydration, and found a large puncture wound in the side. The man across from him let out a raspy laugh.

   “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

   “The water. Of all the things that could have been stabbed: your face, your heart, your lungs… you make it through all of that and the most devastating thrust is through the damn water.”

   “I fail to see the humor in that.”

   The human grinned. “Brother, if you want to greet the Reaper with a sour puss, have at it. Me, I’m just hoping the afterlife has some ice.”

   He didn’t answer. He tried to get up instead, but his body refused to respond. Too much pain, too little energy. Not to mention the heat. What he would give for some shade.

   His eyelids were getting heavy. That judging sun was sapping his strength. So, what? He had traveled a long way and worked hard. Who would judge him for a nap? Let them judge. They could take it up with the Sower later.

   He adjusted his position on the rock just a bit to keep the sharper edges from jabbing into spine. His eyes closed. His chin dropped to his chest. Somewhere in the distance, he heard bells…
   Korkarin jerked awake at the feeling of fingers in his hair. Bren smiled faintly from the edge of the bed. She pulled her hands back into her lap.

   “You were having a nightmare.”

   “What… how did you get in here?”

   “Yana has kept the spare key in the same spot for the last twenty years, Tal. Are you okay?”

   Korkarin rubbed at his eyes and sat up. The blankets bunched up at his waist; the breeze coming through the window felt good on his shirtless torso. If he felt uncomfortable being half-naked in front of his friend, he didn’t show it.

   “I’m fine now.”

   “Do you want to talk about the dream?”

   “Not particularly. It was just a bad dream, same as any other. A little bloodier, maybe.” He yawned. “What time is it?”

   “Near dawn. We should pick up Darian soon.”

   “Alright. Did you wake up my mother when you came in?”

   She shook her head. “She was already up. She said she had an idea that you’d be taking off on behalf of the Singer and couldn’t sleep. When I came in, she had already put together half a dozen meals for us to take with us.”

   Korkarin gaped. “Did she say anything to you?”

   “She told me to come check on you. Do you think I would just sneak into your room and watch you sleep without permission?”

   “I mean, kind of. It seems like something you would do.”

   “Heh. Maybe. Blame this one on your mother. She wants grandkids. Anyway, you’re up now, so let’s go. Get dressed.”

   He nodded and waited. When she didn’t get up, he looked at her pointedly.

   “Well?”

   “What?”

   He gestured toward the door. “Do you mind? I need to get dressed.”

   A coy grin played across Bren’s lips. “So get dressed, Tal. We’re all adults here.”
   They walked together in silence, eyes forward as Bren led him to the small inn where most of her fellow mercenaries had chosen to rent out rooms while in Mekan. Their packs were settled comfortably on their shoulders. Lazy birds rode the morning currents across a tangerine sky above them, no doubt looking for the worms proverbially owed them.

   Korkarin glanced at his friend and immediately regretted it. The smug look on her face had been there since leaving the house. It hadn’t changed even remotely, as if her expression had been frozen by way of a daeva. He made a noise of disgust.

   “Something wrong?” she asked.

   “It was cold.”

   “I wasn’t cold.”

   “You might not have been. The room was cold.”

   “Just because you had the window open doesn’t mean it was cold. Maybe it was fear-related. Were you scared?”

   “No, I wasn’t… what would I be scared of?”

   “I don’t know. You just had a nightmare.”

   He scowled at that. Bren’s look of satisfaction finally changed, though to Korkarin’s consternation, it did so by growing brighter. She was needling him on purpose. He reminded himself that being one’s friend for a long period of time didn’t necessarily mean you had to like them for all of it.

   They could make out Andigar up ahead. He stood next to a sturdy, black pony, his pack already tied tightly to the saddle. He was wearing banded mail with flat, heavy metal shoulder plates. His helm was tucked under his arm, a blocky gray thing that looked as if it had been carved from stone. It was ugly and marred by the marks of countless skirmishes.

   “You retrieved your mount already?” Korkarin asked once they had reached him.

   “You told me to be prepared,” the baunkar said. “So I am.”

   “So you are. Forgive us. Bren and I still need to visit the stables and then we’ll head out.”

   “Are you going to tell me where we’re going yet?”

   “We’ve got two villages to travel to,” Bren said. “One to the south and one to the east. The latter will take some time getting to, as there are no routes that we know of traveling directly to it. We’ll head south first, to Trome.”

   Korkarin nodded. “The nature of our journey may seem frivolous to you, Darian, but it is official business handed down from the most important member of my people. I would appreciate it if you treat it as such while we are gone, with the same discretion and seriousness that is expected of me.”

   “You want extra weapons, Korkarin, you’ve already got them. Ain’t my nature to be flappin’ my lips about the business I get up to. Even business I didn’t want any part of to begin with. Do me a favor, though, and keep your racism under the same lock and key, huh?”

   The captain’s eyes widened. “My racism? Listen here, you-”

   “Hey, hold on!” Bren said, stepping between them again.

   “You’re the leader,” Andigar said. “I’m willing to respect that, but most of your people don’t like most of mine. That’s a fact. Some of the things you said last night, some of the looks you threw my way, they still don’t sit right with me. I’ll follow all the orders you want, as long as they come from a place of respect. I ain’t sultani, but I ain’t dirt, either.”

   Korkarin had a half-dozen biting responses fit to burst from his mouth, but a pleading look from Bren made him swallow them down. He nodded and extended his hand. Andigar clasped it with his own and they gave a single, tense shake.

   “Fresh start. Yesterday never happened. I won’t mention any jail cells. We’ll set out today as… as peers.”

   Andigar grinned. “You practically choked on that, but it’s good enough for me.”

   Bren rolled her eyes. “Sower weeps, Tal, how many times are you going to measure that thing today?”

   “What are you talking about?” Andigar asked.

   “She’s not talking about anything,” Korkarin snapped. “Saddle up. We’re already losing daylight.”

   The baunkar smirked and pulled his helm over his head. His thick left leg lifted up and slid into the stirrup. One quick motion pulled him up and onto the back of his mount. The pony let out a soft neigh before clopping along the road. Just behind, the two sultani shared a look. The trip was going to be longer than its days.
   Muscles strained tight under Garrix’s dark green hide as she pulled, bringing the rope fully around yet another pile of logs. Was this her fiftieth bundle today? Her hundredth? She had lost track hours ago, but such things mattered little to her. However tiring the work might be, it was also necessary. That meant it was also rewarding.

   Once the rope had been knotted properly and the logs were sure to stay together, she used both hands to haul them to one of the waiting carts. Another sobek stood in the back, receiving the bundles and arranging them to maximize the storage capacity.

   “Garrix!” someone called. The sobek handed off her load and turned to see who.

   With long strides, Viskar was making her way towards her through the workers, her long, black tail swishing behind her. As the Nebkha, she struck an imposing figure, tall and thickset and covered in scars as she was. It looked as if her left eye was gone, but it was only sunken into the deep gouge that crossed that side of her face. Her vision remained perfect, something many warriors had made the mistake of doubting over the years.

   However, though Viskar’s appearance encouraged fear and though she was perhaps the deadliest fighter their race had ever seen, there was still one more distinction that set her apart: she was Garrix’s blood sister and her closest friend.

   “Well met, Nebkha,” Garrix said, embracing the black sobek.

   “You don’t call me that. You know that.”

   Garrix grinned. “Sister, then. It has been many weeks since I’ve seen you last. I feared something might have happened to you.”

   “If it had, would you have not heard about it?”

   “You have a point there. Where did you travel?”

   “To the lands ahead. I needed to know what will come next so that we might plan more precisely in our favor. I have mapped the terrain and plotted our course. It won’t be straightforward nor will it be easy, but we will not be blind.”

   “Will you be returned for a while, then? At least long enough to share a meal and tell me of the things you saw, I hope. Did you encounter anyone? Were there strange beasts? I long to taste something new.”

   Viskar laughed, a sound not unlike scraping sandpaper. “Patience, Garrix. Of course we will meet and converse. You would be no good as my general if you were never kept informed.”

   “In your absence, I have felt less like a general and more like the carpenter I never wanted to be.”

   “I thank you for that, my friend. It is all necessary, I assure you. The harvesting is going well, then?”

   “Mostly. We have more than enough wood and have secured a generous amount of oil, but we will need more iron and more steel.”

   “In time. Our ally is securing arrangements as we speak.” Viskar clapped the other sobek on the shoulder. “It is truly good to see you, and on such a beautiful day. Enjoy it. Take a break from this work and come meet me at dusk. At dusk, we will discuss the future.”

A Captain’s Duty Part Three

A Captain’s Duty Part Four

A Captain’s Duty Part One

A few years ago, I was suggested via a friend to and commissioned by a representative of Dreamscarred Press to do an original novel set in a brand new campaign world based around a module my friend was working on called Akashic Mysteries. I had helped my friend with a load of flavor text for the module (which I would go on to not be given any credit for, despite my friend’s insistence on my behalf) and had written three novels at the time, and so I seemed like a pretty safe choice. I would write the book, and they would either pick it up or they would sit on it and after a couple years, full rights would revert to me to use how I wanted.

I struggled with it for over a year. I didn’t fully understand the world sandbox I was playing in, and I didn’t really like the material I was putting together. I liked some of the characters, I liked some lines of dialogue and some of the settings I was creating, but for the most part it was a slog I wasn’t particularly proud of.

Eventually I put together 26,000 words of something semi-coherent, and then tapped out. I suggested that instead of a full novel, because the module was going to be released digitally, why not do three separate story sections, released intermittently at a reduced price.

I mean, that wasn’t what they asked for. They didn’t go for it, I didn’t hear anything else about it, I wasn’t given credit for the work I did on the actual module, and I’ve been sitting on this third of a fantasy story for quite some time. So now I’m going to share probably the worst work I’ve done, in four entries. Here’s the first:

Prologue:

Life After Death

   Nobody had ever told her how brightly blood would glitter when pooled under an afternoon sun. It was a startlingly beautiful detail amidst a mile and a half of raw carnage. The clawed footsteps that trailed her wound back amongst the dead and dying. Pained moans from the latter swept past her on a slow summer breeze. She paid them no mind. Her eyes were fixed on the horizon.

   Viskar held her left arm tight against her ribs. Deep gashes had been raked into her by one she had once called friend. They were serious wounds, but survivable. Likewise the nasty cut that crossed down her left brow and into her cheek. For a brief time, blood had crashed into her eye leaving her seeing nothing but red while she fought. She feared she would be blind on that side but after the battle had settled, she found the orb had managed to remain unscathed. The wound would only leave one more ragged scar. Such marks served to illustrate her capacity for survival, her fearlessness as a warrior.

   Ahead, she could make out the Gold Divide. The rich orange sand of the Caravel Desert mixed with the white of the Pearl Dunes. It was where the peace contracts between the sobek tribes were to be discussed and agreed upon. Things had turned out… differently.

   She saw promise in the aftermath of the convergence, however. Despite scores of crumpled torsos and despite the pain that crackled through every inch of her worn body, she envisioned a new age of solidarity. Viskar saw a future for her people and herself; she placed one clawed foot in front of the other to meet it.

   Each step fueled a fire inside her that would burn away the ache and replace it with unquestionable purpose.

Chapter One:

Wanted For Questioning

   There was a sharp clanging sound as Captain Tal Korkarin slammed the criminal’s face against the door of the prison cell. Inside, a man in dark green robes with gold trim cringed. The criminal’s nose began gushing blood and the prisoner scooted to the far side of the cell to avoid it.

   “Who is this?” asked a guard. He glanced up disinterestedly from a stack of papers. He held the tip of a quill against the top sheet.

   “Balos Farren,” Korkarin said. “You’ll find him in the bounty sheets. He’s a ship thief from the Dromys Channel.”

   “Mm. And would you like to collect the bounty for yourself or relinquish it on behalf of the Sultanate?”

   “What do you think?”

   “I have to ask.”

   “I know you do. I’ll take it and I’ll collect it from the bounty house myself after Balos’ identity has been confirmed.” Korkarin unlocked the cell and shoved the bleeding thief inside. The man already occupying the space eyed them both curiously but said nothing.

   “Guarantees proof of deliver that way,” Korkarin finished.

   “Come on, Tal,” the guard said.

   “You come on. If the Singer wanted more bounties turned over for the Sultanate to use, he would pay his agents more which, in turn, would leave them less likely to misplace the rewards. Believe that I’ll be keeping up on what happens with Farren here.”

   The guard grumbled but kept his response low enough that it couldn’t be deciphered. Korkarin locked the cell again and dropped the keys on the guard’s desk. Balos glared balefully at his back.

   “Off to the streets again, then?”

   “No, sir,” Korkarin said. “Dropping that one off was my last act of the day. I’m off to enjoy what evening I have left.”
   Mekan, the capital city of the Sultanate, was a thriving network of commercial interests. There was plenty of opportunity for merchants, smiths, culinary masters, craftsmen, and mercenaries of every race, provided a portion of all profits were given back to the city to use for repairs, maintenance, and expansion.

   Plenty of those funds wound up not being used on any of that. Instead, it was shoved into the pockets of bureaucrats and other city officials. What little was left was spent on frivolous decorations for Mekan: golden capstones for roofs, statue commissions for long-dead heroes whose legacies had been blown wildly out of proportion, elaborate stained glass windows in tax offices and similar buildings that wanted them more than they truly needed them.

   Alaric Thear, the Singer for the Sands and undeniable authority of the Sultanate, said nothing. He sat in his massive estate, taking meetings to address trivial things and seemingly ignoring any matter of circumstance that fell out of his personal interest. The ambivalence and corruption that ran through the sultani government couldn’t have been unknown to the man but he made no move to curb it or – for that matter – mention it at all.

   It was enough to make Tal Korkarin almost dread strapping on his leather armor and pale gold uniform each day. The gold star pin that denoted his position as an agent of the peace was regarded with disdain by his peers and disgust from the populace. He wore it with pride anyway, but it was a battered pride with more than a few cracks.

   Korkarin maneuvered through the streets at a casual pace, the long tail of his coat brushing lightly at the backs of his knees. The smell of spices and cooked meats drifted his way from grills set up on either side of the road. Peppered dune cats from the east, salted bay cattle from the north, several different aviary selections covered in a number of exotic sauces. He ignored the growls from his stomach and stepped lightly through the crowd and around shiftless carriages. A group of maadmi paused their bartering with a human merchant to give him a dirty look. He paid them no mind; there were few of the short, gray people that he trusted and they had long since passed into the next life. 

   A suqur florist beckoned him over with one winged arm. A small canopy over the stand had been erected early on to protect the flowers from the harshness of the sun, but it was pulled back now as the day wound down and the temperature cooled. The hawk-headed merchant waved his hand over a showcase of moon lilies and snake-petals. To the side of the counter several vases had been lined up with more varied bouquets prearranged inside.

   “Look around, Master Guard. I’m sure you can find something to catch your eye. Citrus blossoms for your window sill? Night orchids for your love?”

   Korkarin arched an eyebrow. The flesh at the base of the suqur’s beak stretched up in an embarrassed smile.

   “No lover, then. Apologies. Perhaps some ebon roses for a table arrangement?”

   “When I sit down to eat, I don’t want to feel like I’m at the funeral of the animal on my plate. I will take a half dozen moon lilies, though. Please.”

   “You have an eye for beauty, my sultani friend. I will ready them immediately.”

   Korkarin fished out a handful of coppers to pay for the flowers while the suqur wrapped them up. They bid each other farewell with the captain tucking the lilies loosely under one arm and the merchant resuming his calls for business.

   The road Korkarin walked along eventually forked into two directions. The right led to the Soulspark District where painters and sculptors would congregate to display the wares their inner passions had wrought. Mummers would occasionally put on performances while poets sang their latest masterpieces with great flourishes. The district was likely empty at this hour, with art and artist alike packed up and headed home for the night.

   He went right instead, following the curving path down to a long stretch of houses built along the Pale Dawn River. The river swept through the city under bridges and through a handful of neighborhoods. Daevic enchantments, some of the only few allowed within city limits, had been put in place a thousand years previous to keep the water clear and clean enough to drink. Even so, it was a crime to dump any sort of trash or waste into the river and the handful of unfortunate souls each year who had to have their bodies fished out were treated more with contempt than a sense of tragedy.

   The houses were traditional sultani fare, with squared edges and layers. Boxy things built in white, reds, and shades of cream. Several had porches that extended out towards the Pale Dawn. The very youngest of the homes was still three hundred years old and belonged to a retired art dealer and his wife who would travel up the hill to the Soulspark District twice a week to look for new pieces to hang on their walls.

   Korkarin’s house was an older one, golden yellow when he bought it but repainted powder blue since to help it stand out. It hadn’t come cheap but several areas required repairs, so he had received a deal all the same. More importantly, it was good for his mother’s aching joints to be near the water, so he had cashed in a good chunk of his savings from his years working as the law and signed the papers. The handywork around the house kept him busy in his down time and the sunrise on the water was worth every copper by itself.

   Two wide brass doors opened to the interior. He walked in without knocking and saw his mother across the living room and through a pair of sliding glass doors that led out to the patio. She had her back turned to him and was working diligently at her garden. It was a long box of color, full of flowers of all shapes and sizes.

   No moon lilies, though.

   He tucked the present behind his back, leaned against the door frame and rapped at the glass with his free hand. Yana Korkarin turned quickly, startled. Apprehension quickly turned to something warmer once recognition set in. Her mouth twisted into a grin and she rose from the deck. She wiped her hands on her knees and took her son’s cheeks in her palms.

   “Hello, honey,” she said. Her lips brushed against his forehead lightly.

   “Hello, Mother. I brought you these.”

   He presented her with the lilies. Yana’s eyes widened and she touched her fingers to her lips. She leaned in to smell them. Korkarin handed them to her and she took them gently.

   “What are these for, Tal?”

   “I thought you would like them, is all.”

   “Did something happen on your shift?”

   “What? No. I just thought they looked nice and you would like them.”

   “Are you hurt? What happened?”

   “Mother,” he said, exasperated. “I’m fine. I promise. I can get you nice things without having a brush with death, can’t I?”

   “Alright,” she said haughtily. “I just worry about you, you know. I wish you would do anything else.”

   “What I do paid for the house, remember? Besides, I’m not good at anything else.”

   “You could learn. You’re a smart boy.”

   Yana moved past him into the house to search for a vase to put the lilies in. Korkarin stayed where he was, watching the way the sun played across the surface of the river as it set. Purple streaks shimmered towards him; he smiled back.

   “Someone stopped by for you earlier, Tal,” his mother called from somewhere inside. He guessed the kitchen.

   “Oh? Did they say what they wanted? Did I win anything?”

   “It was a summons.”

   Korkarin narrowed his eyes and stepped back inside. He closed the glass doors behind him. “A summons where?”

   “To the palace. You’re supposed to meet with the Singer for the Sands at dawn.”

   Yana stepped into the living room. She had a green and yellow vase in her hands with the lilies positioned carefully inside. She looked around a moment before setting it atop the mantle over the fireplace.

   “Did they say what the meeting was in regards to?”

   “Have they ever said anything about what you get up to?” He had to concede that they did not. “That’s partly why I wish you would do something else. I don’t like all the secrets and the side-eyes.”

   He sighed. “I know, Mother.”

   “You’re my little boy, Tal.”

   “I haven’t been a boy for a long time, Mother.”

   “Don’t think I don’t know that. You’re still my boy. I just want you to be happy.”

   “I’m not unhappy.”

   Yana tutted. “Not unhappy isn’t happy. You need to find yourself a woman.”

   “Mother.”

   “What? You’re not getting any younger. Maybe if you had a woman in your life, you would find a more fulfilling career. Something safer. Become a carpenter or something. What about Bren? She was always a sweet girl. What has she been up to?”

   “Mother, Bren-” Korkarin stopped, closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. Composure regained, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve got to be up for a meeting at dawn, remember? It wouldn’t do for me to show up asleep on my feet in front of the Singer.”

   “No. I suppose it wouldn’t. Alright, go to bed, Tal. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

   I hope not. “Sure thing.”

   He gave her a small, one-armed hug and started for the carpeted staircase that led up to the second floor and his bedroom. He got to the landing before his mother called after him once more.

   “Thank you for the lilies,” she said. “They’re lovely.”

   Tal Korkarin allowed himself a smile. He nodded once and said good night.
***
   The jail cell was dark and quiet. A single lantern hung in the far corner of the holding area, out of reach of the prisoners and illuminating the guards’ desk where the sultani officer – more portly than his race was typically known for – was sound asleep. It was chilly as the cool of the desert night settled into the stone that made up their walls, floor and beds.

   Mathias Kolter settled as deep into his green and gold robes as he could. The cot he sat on was thin and too small for the rocky section that jutted from the wall. It wasn’t his first time in a cell, but it was the first time he had been arrested for getting drunk and slapping a bartender. His discretions weren’t usually so… overt. He had been blowing off steam, spending what few coins he had left after sinking the rest into yet another failed attempt to curry favor in the sultani court. It was to his dismay that he discovered the officials there were corrupt enough to rob him but not enough to look the other way while he throttled a man for watering down his ale.

   All the same, petty assault wasn’t nearly as heinous as ship theft. Boats good enough to navigate the twisted channels that led out to the Three Seas were highly prized, valued in the tens of thousands of golds at least. Whoever Balos Farren was, he had guts. No brains, apparently, but guts aplenty.

   He looked at the man – human, like him – sharing the cramped quarters. He lay on his side on the cot adjacent. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t sleeping. The nose he had broken on the cell bars restricted easy breathing and no doubt hurt like hell. Farren kept making snorting noises from a faced crusted with dried blood. It wasn’t a particularly good look.

   “Balos,” Kolter said softly.

   The man said nothing. A thick, wet rasp rolled out of his throat instead.

   “Balos,” Kolter said again. “I know you’re awake. Might as well talk to me. It’ll keep me from going crazy and might even take your mind off the pain.”

   The ship thief opened one and scowled. “I don’t know you.” His n’s came out as d’s. Kolter resisted the urge to snicker.

   “No. You don’t. But I know you. Balos Farren, right? The infamous master boat lifter?”

   “I ain’t lifted nothing. Don’t you accuse me of that. You don’t know me.”

   Kolter waved the man off. “Oh, stop. Look over there. You see our guard? It would take the Reaper itself to wake him. You don’t need to hide anything from me.”

   Farren sat up slowly and looked over towards the desk. The sultani seated behind it had his head leaned back against the wall. Deep, comfortable snores set his body vibrating. Shadows danced across his face as the lantern flame flickered. The ship thief turned back towards Kolter, pressed a finger gingerly against one nostril and blew hard, shooting bloody mucus across the floor. Kolter flinched and when Farren repeated the gesture with the other side, he flinched again.

   Still, he saw his opening. As the sultani let out another snore, he pushed a veil out towards Farren. It wasn’t a complicated veil nor a particularly strong one. He held it back some, letting it drift towards the other prisoner, less a manipulation and more a friendly… suggestion.

   “Feel better?”

   “No,” Farren said. “But I can breathe a little better. What’ve you heard of me?”

   “Just that if you want to get a quality craft – or the materials from one, anyway – there aren’t many in the business better than you.”

   “Ain’t nobody better than me,” the other man sneered.

   “Maybe not while you were out, but with you locked up I imagine somebody will be coming along with an angle for your reputation.”

   Farren turned his eyes down. “Yeah, well,” he said. There was a sullen tone in his words. “They got a ways to go.”

   “How’d they get you, anyway? A guy as good as you. That’s the real surprise, I think.”

   “It’s that Korkarin. Man’s got a sense to him s’almost unnatural. Almost caught me twice before with his sniffin’ around. I should’ve known better, but the money’s too good in Mekan to pass up.”

   “Too good to be true, more like. Who’s Korkarin?”

   “Tal Korkarin. You ain’t heard of him?” Kolter gave a faint shake of the head. “He’s one of the sultani ain’t taking bribes. A lot of these other guys, you can usually work out some kind of a deal. Korkarin, he don’t budge.

   You beautiful idiot. It was amazing what you could get out of someone just by using a bit of daevic persuasion and faking a little interest. Flattery worked for most. It certainly worked on the dim.

   “He’s important, this guy? I can’t imagine a novice on the straight and narrow would make it very long if the rest of his people were taking a cut.”

  “Yeah, he’s got rank. Captain, I think. Never mind him, though, because you’re right about me. I’ll get out of here, soon as I get a palm to grease. Won’t let them catch me again, I tell ya. This was a, whaddaya call it? A fluke. It’ll sort itself out soon enough, you’ll see. Balos Farren ain’t staying put for long.” The ship thief carefully scrunched his face up in thought. “What’d you say your name was again?”

   “Me?” Kolter laughed and lay back on his cot. “I’m nobody special. Certainly not a man of note like yourself. Me? I’m just a drunk. A drunk with dreams.”
***
   Tal Korkarin’s dreams faded once he woke but whatever they had been left him with an intense feeling of unease. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and rubbed at bleary eyes. The air of early morning filtered through his window and played coolly against his skin. Outside, the sun had not yet crested the horizon but the scarlet slivers over the hills had begun to creep ever upwards.

   He dressed quietly so as not to disturb his mother across the hall. He chose muted red formal wear for the meeting and strapped his sword further back on his hip than he would during a shift. A tight strap was fixed around the guard and through a hook on the scabbard, securing the weapon inside and preventing it from being drawn. It was one of the many safety requirements necessary when addressing the mighty head of the Sultanate.

   A bowl of fruits was positioned next to the front door and Korkarin grabbed an apple to munch on as he walked. The streets of Mekan were much quieter this early in the day, mostly empty except for a handful of merchants trying to get an opportunistic start on the competition. Stores were being constructed, grills and forges heated. Steam rose in ribbons; Korkarin liked the look of it amidst the gradually growing light.

   As he walked, others began to filter into the causeways. Humans positioned themselves strategically, aiming to curry favor with anyone passing by that looked important. Sultani inn-workers woke to relieve their peers of their shifts. A few maadmi made their way to oversee construction repairs on capital buildings, bridges and whatever new city projects they had been approved for. There were even some guards standing around. They looked awfully bored, but Korkarin knew they would be grateful later on that they hadn’t caught a shift with any real work.

   When he reached the Palace, the sentries out front waved him through. He offered to be inspected, to have his peace-knot tested, but they declined.

   “Tal, the day you decide to break the rules is the day a suqur becomes Singer for the Sands.”

   He had rolled his eyes at that, quietly frustrated. The lack of discipline amongst even the supposedly elite guards was frightening. He made a mental note to mention it during the meeting and continued on through the lobby to the receiving area.

   A sky bridge extended out from the palace proper to the beautiful silver and golden dome where the Singer would meet his audiences. The throne room had marble flooring painted in a mosaic commemorating some of the greatest accomplishments of the sultani race and even, Korkarin suspected, a few things that other races should probably have been given the credit for. Doors near the back would lead to servants’ quarters and an expansive home for the leader of the Sultanate. The Singer for the Sands would want for nothing.

   Korkarin knew all this from a past visit and he wasn’t particularly keen to be revisiting the room. It all seemed to be a bit superfluous to him. You didn’t need fancy trappings to earn respect. You needed to know your people.

   The sky bridge was constructed of reinforced glass. The floor was transparent and looked down into an expansive garden full of fountains and resting stations. The walls of the bridge weren’t as thick and rose high up before slanting into a pyramidal roof. When the rays of the sun hit it, the glass gained a pink hue, like a tunnel of quartz.

   Several cushioned chairs and small tables lined either side of the bridge. Korkarin took a seat near the middle and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. He closed his eyes and tried to conserve energy. The occasional soft footfalls of passing attendants threatened to put him back to sleep.

   His mind wandered to the meeting itself, but thinking did little to put him at ease. What could the Singer want from him? Were his colleagues complaining about his attitude again? Would he be demoted? Worse? A summons of this nature was not a common occurrence and he doubted he had done anything noteworthy recently enough to precipitate a positive meeting. He frowned.

   The frown deepened when he sensed a presence standing near him. He prepared to rise for a respectful greeting, but when he opened his eyes, it wasn’t the Singer’s vizier standing before him. Instead, a familiar woman posed with her weight on the right foot and her smirk slanting upwards on the left. A thin, horizontal scar crossed her left cheek a couple inches below her eye. Her sheathes were empty, as was her quiver, but he knew her to be no less dangerous without weapons. Her dirty blonde hair was tied and tucked back behind her pointed ears; this kept it from distracting away from her deep purple eyes.

   “Bren,” Korkarin said softly.

   She wore a black jerkin over a dark green, long-sleeved shirt. Her breeches were black as well, though he could make out several discolored spots. He looked up at her in alarm.

   “Is that blood?”

   Bren sauntered over to a chair directly across from him and plopped into it. “It’s not mine and it’s not new. The stuff is just difficult to get out of clothes once it gets in and there weren’t many times on the road to give it a shot.”

   “You were on a job?” he asked.

   “Got back this morning. I wanted to see if you were up to grab breakfast, so I swung by your house before changing. Your mother sent me here.”

   Korkarin groaned. “So you talked to my mother.”

   “I did. She looks well.”

   “She is well. Did she-”

   “Mention us getting married?” Bren grinned. “Aye, she did. I told her I’d consider it.”

   “Why do you encourage her?”

   “Because it flusters you, and flustering you amuses me.” She feigned hurt. “What, you don’t think we would be good together? Tal, you wound me.”

   “We’ve never been remotely more than friends. Besides, I’m-”

   “Married to your job.”

   Korkarin scowled. “Preoccupied most of the time.”

   “Oh, come on. You know it’s more than that. You live and breathe being a peace-keeper here. You’re good at it, Tal. You always have been. Certainly better than…” She jerked a thumb towards the entry to the bridge.

   “Yeah, I know. I’m going to say something.”

   Bren smirked. “You see? There’s no room for a woman in your life right now. You’re too busy being amazing at something that matters and irritating the people who aren’t. That’s probably why you’re here: a promotion. Am I right? Am I close?”

   “I suppose we’ll see.”

   “You don’t know? You’ve got to have some kind of idea, surely.”

   “I don’t,” Korkarin said, letting out a long breath. He looked towards the Singer’s throne room and saw a human woman in purple silk robes swishing her way towards them. “I think I’m about to find out, though.”

   “Captain Tal Korkarin?” the vizier asked once she had reached them.

   He stood up and smoothed out his clothes. “That’s me.”

   “The Singer for the Sands will see you now.” She looked over at Bren. “Your companion will have to stay here, I’m afraid.”

   Bren held her hands up and crossed her legs. “Fine with me. As much as I would love to know what got this guy out of bed so early, I’m not really dressed for the occasion.”

   “You don’t have to wait, Bren.”

   His friend grinned back at him. “I’m not going to have breakfast without you. That’s the only reason I haven’t slept yet and I’ve already waited this long.”

   Korkarin twisted his mouth, then nodded. He turned back to the vizier and gestured for her to lead the way. He didn’t look back; he didn’t want to give away that his heart was pounding in his chest. Anxiety wasn’t normally in his nature but extraordinary circumstances often led to abnormal reactions. It was bad enough that the woman could probably read him anyway, daevas or not.

   Two thick mahogany doors led into the throne room with a single bisected bar acting as a door handle. Inside, the marble floor was there with the mosaics still as clean as ever. The doors towards the back looked the same. Something about the room made it feel bigger than he remembered, though. He wondered if the walls had been expanded out further, wondered if that was something that was even possible. Several torches flickered in sconces set high up all around the circular room, enriched by daevas so that they shone a deep scarlet. They heated the room to an almost unbearable temperature.

   In the exact center of the dome was the throne itself, positioned on a podium set five stairs above the floor. It was a lavish seat carved from blackwood and engraved with the likeness of honeyvines. Platinum inlay defined the contours of the furniture and matched the silver cushions fitted for it.

   The elder sultani nestled comfortably within it, wrinkled hands clutching the ends of the armrests and looking no less spectacular. He was dressed in golden finery. A long, loose shirt covered his torso, buttoned up by rubies large enough to pay Korkarin’s wages for at least a year. His breeches were made of the same fabric and came down low enough that no skin showed above his slippers. A crown of emerald rested upon his brow, crafted to resemble the same vines in the throne. He was quite regal, though he appeared mildly bored.

   Korkarin swung his sheath behind him at an angle and took to one knee. The vizier walked past him and took her place at the right side of the steps to the throne. Alaric Thear, Singer for the Sands, leader of the Sultanate and its people, extended a flat hand with the palm up.

   “Rise, Tal Korkarin. We have much to discuss.”

   Slowly, the captain rose. He clasped his hands behind him, at the base of his back. He lifted his chin and looked directly at the Singer.

   “I am at your service, my lord.”

   “Though you may not enjoy it, I hear.”

   He tightened despite himself and he felt a flush creep up his neck. His words were considered carefully before he opened his mouth and even then, he had to clear his throat to speak them.

   “It is an honor to serve as an agent of the peace in Mekan. If you have heard of discontent on my part, it has nothing to do with my duty or with your rule.”

   “But you have concerns.”

   Korkarin hesitated and then nodded. “My colleagues don’t often share the same views that I do where concerns the law. Many of them are lazy. Greedy. Apathetic. Many turn the other way if there is enough money involved or if they’re not working while a crime is being committed. The security in the palace itself is laughable and dangerously so.”

   “Do you think the Singer weak?” the vizier asked. Her casual demeanor from the hallway had disappeared. Condescension was writ in her face now.

   “I would ask that you not put words in my mouth,” Korkarin shot back. He bowed his head respectfully to Thear. “I’m only saying that you are poorly defended by the people you pay to do just that. I can feel the imbuement in this very room. You have an incredible mastery over daevas. Even so, a sultani in your position – esteemed as it is – should not be so haphazardly defended by his own people.”

   The vizier’s eyebrows rose and she cast a sidelong glance at the Singer. Thear said nothing for several beats. Korkarin repeated his own words mentally and wondered if he had misspoken.

   “I have heard, Captain Korkarin, that despite your prickly nature amongst your peers you are an excellent investigator. Your apparent lack of the flaws you accuse others of has reportedly resulted in an impressively high apprehension record. Prominent criminals. Feared underbosses. Infamous fugitives. Do you not fear repercussion? From their allies, perhaps?”

   “I knew the risks when I began this career. I aimed to make the city safer for everybody. Not just myself. I am willing to sacrifice of myself for this city, but I will not sacrifice the integrity of the Sultanate.”

   Thear nodded and lifted his right hand from the armrest. His index finger pressed to his chin as he thought. There was a slight uptick of his lips in what might have been a smile. Something akin to a sudden breeze brought goosebumps to Korkarin’s skin and he recognized it as inquiring daevas.

   “I do not detect dishonesty in your words, Captain.”

   “I find dishonesty to be borderline villainous,” Korkarin said. “Lies, however small, are seldom done with good intentions in mind and even then, it almost always ends in disaster. Mistruths are the enemy of solutions and the mother of greed and rampant ego.

   Thear nodded again. This time he allowed some small expression into his features. Korkarin tried to place it but didn’t dare set his hopes so high as to assume it was admiration.

   “I am…aware that the Sultanate has its problems. I believe that the complacency and lack of compatibility among the peace-keepers has allowed an increase in crime throughout Mekan. I do recognize these things, though you may not choose to believe it. I also recognize that it is more difficult to stem the whims of a criminal than by subjecting them to an overnight scolding, which seems to be a common solution.

   “I admit freely to you – and you alone, this never leaves this room – that I have my own faults as well. I know the things that are said of me. Of the truths, I have a weakness for exotic wares. There are several villages outside of Mekan that cultivate or craft a great many wonderful things. Fabrics, foods, wines. I have an insatiable taste for these. My vizier would term it an addiction, which is precisely the moment I tune out her counsel. I am indeed guilty of that.

   “More than satisfying my base urges, though, these villages provide many goods for the cities of the Sultanate as well. They stimulate the economy and encourage an image of cultural diversity. Their provisions benefit everything the sultani have built over thousands of years, beyond my desire to be the first to own, eat or wear them. 

   “I bring this up because I have received some troubling reports recently, the subject of which has caused me no small degree of irritation. However, I also see opportunity here. I see where your reputation and my desires might walk hand in hand and – if this courtship should prove fruitful – I see your future becoming more profitable. Additionally, I may see fit to put my weight behind your ideas of reform. The changes you seek may be more easily attained than either of us had individually thought possible.”

   Korkarin felt his throat suddenly dry as harshly as the deserts. “If I may be so bold as to ask, my lord, could you please be more specific?”

   The Singer for the Sands sat up straight in his throne. He adjusted his crown with his left hand and looked the younger sultani dead in the eye.

   “I have a task for you, Captain Korkarin, and I believe it would behoove you to accept it.”
***
   Mathias Kolter’s legs hung over the edge of the cot, making it easy for the guard to kick him awake. The man sat up slowly, struggling to come fully awake. It had taken longer than he liked to fall asleep due to the wretched noises Balos Farren croaked out all night. Kolter cast a look over at the ship thief and thought he was dead until another agonizing snore ripped out of him.

   “What did I do? What do you want?” Kolter asked.

   “Get up. You’re out of here.”

   He looked at the guard suspiciously. “What does that mean? Where am I going?”

   “I don’t much care where you go. The bartender you jerked around decided not to press charges. I figure you maybe had a point about him watering his drinks down and he doesn’t want to cause much more of a stir than has already come up. Either way, I need that bed free for a vandal we’re bringing in, so get up.”

   Kolter rose reluctantly. Reluctant not because he was fond of the cramped little cell or the bloody man-shaped war horn he shared it with, but because he hadn’t even a copper to his name. He was exhausted and without any other place to sleep. The thin mattress, uncomfortable as it was, had still been the silver lining to his arrest.

   “Come on!”

   “Alright, alright! Although I hope you didn’t describe that rock as a bed to the next guy.”

   He shuffled out and was escorted upstairs. They passed by a booking area but as he had had no extra possessions beyond the clothes he was wearing and thus had relinquished nothing, he was taken directly to the entrance instead. He turned to the guard to bid farewell but the sultani had already turned back without a word.

   Squinting in the light, he made his way down the steps of the jailhouse and into the streets. Business had already begun and his stomach growled at the decadent sights and smells that greeted him. If he wasn’t going to get any rest, he should at least get himself something to eat.

   Not ten minutes later he found himself in the Listless Fisher, a favorite little tavern of his. Plenty of people passed through with loose tongues and poor gambling habits. The four corner tables always had a game going with the two nearest the bar operating high stakes.

   The sultani behind the bar was cleaning a glass when Kolter walked in. As soon as he saw him, the bartender’s shoulders visibly sagged. He put the glass away and laid the cloth on the counter.

   “Mathias, what are you doing here? I thought you got arrested.”

   “That wasn’t even half a day ago. Word travels fast.”

   “It does amongst bartenders. Don’t even think about touching me. I’ve never watered down my drinks, I never will, and you damn well know that.”

   Kolter snorted and took a seat on a stool at the bar. “When have I ever been anything but cordial to you, Rolf? You’re a good guy who treats his customers right. You’ve always done right by me, to be sure. Last night was a… well, an irregularity. You know me. You know that’s out of character. I was just having an off night and I wound up in the wrong bar and I got served a bad drink. Accidents happen.”

   “Accidents. Yeah. You just slipped and choked a man.”

   “Aye, I did. My back is a mess of knots from the chunk of granite or whatever the hell it was I had to sleep on. I figure that balances the scoreboard.”

   “What do you want, Mathias?” Rolf asked.

   “First thing I need is a drink and a meal. I’m a little short, though, on account of failed ventures, but you know I’m good for it.”

   “I don’t know that. My ledger shows you owing more than you’ve paid.”

   “Does it take into account all the times I’ve helped you preemptively stop a mess or a murder from happening in here? Hold on. One second.” His eyes closed halfway and a tinge of green lit up beneath the lids. He said nothing for a handful of breaths and then slowly turned on the stool. He pointed at a shaggy-haired man at the card table near the door. “There. That fellow is holding something special. The guy across from him suspects it and is just waiting for the right chance to catch him in the act.”

   “You know I don’t like anybody playing with daevas in here,” the bartender hissed.

   “If anyone asks, say I told you I had a hunch. Besides, I’m pretty sure you don’t like anybody cheating at cards in here, either. You probably like someone getting gutted for cheating even less. Just trust me. Check it out. See if it helps keep some of the drinks and maybe some blood from spilling.”

   Silence trickled between them as Rolf fought for a retort. When none came to him, he snatched up his rag and walked over to the gambler. Kolter watched as words were exchanged between them and smirked as the confrontation grew heated. He could imagine the conversation playing out: accusations of the gambler drinking too much, the gambler denying it in return. There would be no talk of the cards in the man’s sleeves; neither wanted it to escalate further than it already had lest the con be revealed and other tempers be ignited. Finally, disgusted, the patron snatched up his winnings and stormed out.

   “That went well,” Kolter said when the bartender returned.

   “Go to hell, Mathias. I don’t know why I even trust what you say.”

   “Because you know what happens to your tavern when you don’t. Now my friend, please, a drink and a meal.”

   The order was met with a scowl but delivered to the kitchen all the same. Kolter was given a stout cherry ale to wet his throat. Not long after came a freshly smoked meal of pork loins and potatoes. He would have been happy with less but he wasn’t about to argue. After every large, warm bite, he would wash it down with alcohol, letting it all settle softly and ease him into the day.

   “It isn’t healthy to drink this early,” the bartender said.

   “Nobody asked you. Although I do have a question.”

   “And so the real purpose of this not-at-all delightful visit comes to light.”

   “Don’t be crude.” Kolter took a long swig, emptying the mug. He set it aside and folded his hands on the counter. “What do you know about Tal Korkarin?”

   “Korkarin.” The bartender scrunched his face up some. “The name sort of rings a bell.”

   “He’s sultani. A city guard. He’s supposed to be a stand-up sort of fellow, the kind that’s a stickler for the rules but capable at his duties. He hasn’t ever come by here?”

   “A guard you say? That narrows it down some. I think I have an idea of who you’re talking about, but if I’m right, the guy’s got rank. What the hell are you doing looking for him?”

   Kolter laughed. “He just seems like the kind of guy I should associate myself with. The kind of guy who’s going places, if you catch my drift.”

   The bartender cocked his head and fixed Kolter with a keen look. “A guy like that, he’s never going to buy whatever it is you’re trying to sell. Mathias, of all the people you have set your eyes on, this one might possibly be the most pointless venture yet.”

   “Easy for you to say. You’ve got the bar. All I’ve got is my ability to read people and based on that, I think I’ve got a good chance.”

   “You don’t say. Have you met the man?”

   “Briefly. Sort of. I know what I’m doing.” Kolter leaned forward. “I need your help, though. So tell me everything you’ve heard about him.”
***
   Bren Dendalion couldn’t tell for sure if Tal had grown more pale since he entered the throne room to speak with Alaric Thear, but he had certainly grown more severe. Worry lines creased his forehead and the edges of his eyes and lips. She could still see the carefree smile of their youth buried deep in his face and wished there weren’t so many layers between that and what faced her.

   “Are you okay?” she asked, standing so they could talk eye to eye.

   “Never better,” he said, not even trying to mask the lie.

   “I take it no promotion was mentioned.”

   Korkarin ran a hand tightly over his face. She could see a slight tremor there but opted to say nothing. He was not the kind to shake easily. More like than not it was the pressure of being in the same room as the most powerful person in the Sultanate.

   “I’m trying to decide if a promotion was put on the table or if this is an elaborate prank by someone too rich to find something better to do.”

   “That bad?” Bren asked.

   “Maybe. I was given a task. One in my wheelhouse, I suppose, but it would take me outside of the city.”

   “You’re worried about how your mother would react to you leaving.”

   “I’m always worried about her, but only because she worries so much about me. There’s more to it, though. Going outside of the city means I’m also going outside of my jurisdiction. I’m a captain in Mekan. That doesn’t carry a lot of weight outside of the city limits.”

   “Well, what’s the task?”

   Korkarin shook his head. “Not here.” He flashed a quick grin. “Nothing works up an appetite more than being reminded how low you rank, and you are far past due for breakfast.”

   Bren smiled and nodded. “I thought you’d never offer.”

   As they crossed back over the bridge, he walked beside her instead of in front. It was an important detail to her, and not the only one. She had also found echoes of their past in his tone. After months of travel and violence and the occasional fear, it was this piece of a better age she had longed for. Her best friend had not yet been so fully lost to duty. It sparked a sense of whimsy in her that implied she wasn’t quite so lost herself.
***
   If the eatery they decided on had a name, neither knew it. It was a quaint little place with half a dozen tables set up and a board posted outside advertising fresh food. That was it. No catchy sign hanging above the door labeling the place. No fancy dressing. It was all they needed.

   They both ordered eggs and potatoes, prepared in different ways. Two glasses of milk were placed on the table to help wash everything down. The jokes came easy to them. Even to Korkarin, who had always been the more serious of the two.

   “So you went out with your group,” he said once they were well into their meal. “Was it dangerous?”

   “It wasn’t the whole group,” Bren replied. “There are eight of us. Half that, including me, went out for this last job. It wasn’t too bad. A month or two back we were hired to recover some stolen goods. We got everything back without any problems, so they gave us a nice offer to stay on for a bit longer, protecting their wares while they traveled around and sold them. It was easy work. We did see some action, but it was always pretty light.”

   “Hence the blood on your clothes.”

   Bren smirked and lifted the milk to her lips. “Hence the blood on my clothes.”

   “Is Gris Palmos still a part of-”

   “Yes,” she replied curtly.

   “Are you two still-”

   “No. He wasn’t on the trip, either.”

   Korkarin apologized. “It’s been a while since we’ve really had a chance to sit and catch up. I… well.”

   “You miss me,” Bren said triumphantly. “As you should.”

   “I miss knowing about your life,” he corrected, though they both knew it was more than that. “You’re my oldest friend. My best friend. The years haven’t exactly been kind to our relationship.”

   “You can always quit the local authority and freelance your heart out with me. It pays better and I’m fantastic company.”

   “That’s debatable,” he said. They both chuckled.

   They took a break in the conversation to finish their meals in silence. They smiled at each other, all the time that had passed since they last saw each other fading away as if it had been mere moments instead.

   Even that feeling had to end at some point.

   “Tell me about it, Tal,” Bren said. “What is this job that Alaric Thear gave to you?”

   Korkarin sighed and looked around the room for a long moment before answering. When he did, he leaned in so only she could hear him. She matched the move, unconcerned with what it made them look like.

   “The Singer for the Sands has tastes for exotic things. Things that aren’t necessarily sultani-made or grown.”

   “That’s not exactly a secret, Tal. It’s hardly even an eccentricity. The streets of Mekan are filled with maadmi contraptions, suqur foods, baunkar armor being sold by hariq. Hell, the humans would put something together if they spent more than half a thought on it. The only difference is that your average sultani doesn’t have the disposable income Thear does to have the exotic stuff imported.”

   “It’s not a secret, no,” Korkarin said. “It’s the beginning of my answer.”

   “Oh,” Bren said, blushing. “Sorry. Continue.”

   “Thank you. As I was saying, the Singer is a fan of his, I guess I would say adventurous, tastes and fashions. So much so that he keeps a fixed eye on them. He wears certain clothes on certain days. He eats certain meals the same way. Liver from a northern valley goat served with western sultani black beans at the beginning of the week, frost-burned artichoke with a rock hen at the end. That sort of thing.”

   “He has a routine that borders on compulsive, is what you’re saying.”

   “Exactly that. He is, as so many are, a creature of habit.”

   Bren caught on. “Something’s disrupted his habit.”

   Korkarin nodded slowly. “Indeed. Sometime last month their stockpile of… some kind of rice that he likes, it ran dry. The Singer sent a missive formally requesting to purchase more. There was no response. He thought perhaps the message got lost. Or the messenger did, as he never came back. There is a theory, also, that the messenger just left. Colleagues of his reported that he had been unhappy with his wages and his treatment by his superiors and was looking for some way to stick it to the Sultanate. As you said, the Singer’s tastes aren’t exactly a secret. The lost communication was written off as either a mistake or a snub intended to keep the rice from the man who loved it enough to buy it in bulk.”

   “But you don’t believe it.”

   “I don’t know what to believe. We’re still on what they had uncovered before ever even bringing me in.”

   “Okay, so… then, what? The first message was either lost, tossed or ignored. Why didn’t they just send another one?”

   Korkarin said nothing.

   “So they did send someone else.”

   “He disappeared, same as the first. Now it’s an issue. Before they can even put much thought to it, though, another stoppage crops up. This village, every season they develop a new line of garments and Thear would get first pick. Those choices stopped showing up. You would think the man has enough outfits but he noticed when he was unable to get any new ones.”

   Bren was quiet as she took in the information. Whatever the reasoning for the disappearances, it most likely was the beginning of something much larger. Political discontent? Signs of an assassination attempt? 

   “So what does he want with you? What does he expect you to do? Shake some folks down for information?”

   Korkarin shook his head. “Something a little bit more thorough. I’m to go out to the villages personally and report back what I find.”

   “You and who?”

   Korkarin said nothing.

   Bren scoffed. “He wants you to go alone? After two disappearances and everything else that has happened so far, I find that foolish, to say the least.”

   “I’m inclined to agree and I said as much. Thear’s vizier granted me the option to pick a small party of people I trust to go with me. It’s just that… well, they mentioned that I had a reputation around Mekan.”

   “For being skilled?”

   Korkarin rolled his eyes. “For being unlikely to be swayed from my duty.”

   “I told you that you’re married to your job,” Bren laughed. “Well, still. That’s a good quality, Tal. It means that they trust you.”

   “Maybe. They may trust me, but I don’t think Alaric Thear and his people necessarily like me. I voiced my concerns about the apparent apathy running through the Sultanate and especially amongst the city guards in Mekan. Tepid would be an optimistic word for the reaction I got.”

   “The Sultanate prospers which means the people in charge get to stay comfortable. I can see how someone with differing ideals might ruffle their feathers.” Bren shifted in her seat. “So what do you think? Is it all a sham? Maybe an ambush?”

   Korkarin shrugged. “That’s a hell of a thought, isn’t it?”

   “But it’s crossed your mind.”

   “I honestly don’t know. Whatever it is, whether it’s a legitimate problem or not, some element of it feels wrong. If it’s not on the level… would they let me pick my own people if they were setting me up to kill me?”

   “Uh, yes. Tal, that’s exactly what they would want to do. Get rid of you and everybody that thinks like you in one fell swoop.”

   To his credit, Korkarin didn’t swear. The thought seemed obvious in hindsight and it ate at him now, adding another layer to the worries that plagued him. He steepled his fingers and pressed them to his lips. His eyes bore holes into the table.

   “Do you think my mother would be in danger, if that turns out to be the case?” he asked softly and Bren’s heart broke a little for him.

   “Tal, look at me.” His eyes rose to hers. There was concern there, but no uncertainty. The man was iron inside. “Now, listen. We don’t know that you’re a target just yet. At least, not by our people. It’s just important that we consider all the possibilities. If you are, they won’t want to call attention to it. A mission is perfect for cover to get rid of you. Picking off your allies at the same time is an even better move. But murdering your family? That would be the most blatantly obvious, unnecessary action to take. If they want you dead, the mission is all they really need.”

   Korkarin nodded absently. He took his hands away from his face and smiled, almost bashfully. “Or it all could be nothing.”

   “Well, it’s got to be something. There are still missing people. Aren’t you supposed to be the investigator?”

   “You know what I mean,” he said. “Nothing about me.”

   “Right. Except that you’re the best man for the job.” Bren patted his hand. “You and those you trust. Do you have any ideas in that regard?”

   “Not even the slightest. There are a few guards I’m friendly with. Some that I’m not but who are good at their jobs. But people I trust?” He shook his head. “I’ve spent a long time in this job, but I learned pretty early on that I would need to rely on myself if I wanted to stick to the law and I’ve kept my head down while I did it.”

   “Surely you can think of someone you trust.”

   “I don’t think so, Bren.”

   “Somebody.”

   Korkarin looked up, frustration on his lips. He saw the way she was looking at him. Eager. A snake coiled to attack.

   “No,” he said.

   “Come on.”

   “I’m not going to ask that of you.”

   “You’re not asking! I’m volunteering. Anything for an old friend. Besides, who can you trust more than me?”

   “My mother, probably.”

   “Oh, aye? And you’re going to saddle her up, are you? Maybe give her your sword, just in case trouble pops up.”

   “You’ve got an obligation already. You have your band of merry freelancers to worry about. This mission, there isn’t even any real pay that I know of. There’s no definitive objective. It could be a deathtrap for me. I don’t want you involved in this.”

   The mirth left Bren’s face. “Tal, you’re my oldest and best friend. I would never let you walk into a dangerous situation without someone guaranteed to have your back. Ever. Now, the band is enjoying some downtime. We got paid fairly handsomely for the last few jobs. As far as future jobs go, well, not every job needs everyone involved. Each one of us does independent work sometimes. They won’t miss or need me and I won’t want for money. You are not going this alone, Tal. That’s not an argument that exists.”

   Korkarin sighed. He took her hands in his own. “I have a love for you, Bren Dendalion. A finer friend could not be asked for.”

   “Oh, shut up,” she said with a smile.

   “So then there were two. A magnificent force for truth and justice.”

   Bren cleared her throat and looked around. “About that. I know a fellow who would be likely to help us, that would bring that number to three. He’s one of my people and there are few I would rather have my back in a cut-them-up. I know where he should be and I’ll gladly take you there to meet him, but there’s just one thing…”
***
   Tall trees lined the mile-long Blue Morning reflecting pool, all trunks but for the elegant green mess near the top. Mathias Kolter sat on a bench, hands clasped between his knees, staring at the still water and the tall sentinels beside it. As sultani, hariq and maadmi passed by him, he thought to himself that Mekan really was a beautiful city, diverse despite the undercurrent of racial intolerance that existed in every greeting given, every transaction made.

   He didn’t care. It was a hard life to be human, but it was the only life he had ever known and he was not without his talents. As it stood, he had a belly full of warm food and drink and a lead on a future. Rolf had agreed to find more information to support what he had already given, and Kolter planned to return for that in a few hours. He could use a bath in the meantime, but he didn’t know how he would pay for it. No matter. Patience was a virtue, not cleanliness.

   Getting information through others seemed to be his best bet, though he still couldn’t help but feel unproductive. He had no idea where he would even start looking. Mekan wasn’t a small place: tens of thousands lived within the city limits, many of them sultani. The fact that Tal Korkarin was a captain of the law narrowed it down some, but he couldn’t just ask around about him. That kind of inquiry tended to raise a few eyebrows, especially when coming from a human. Especially when that human had just spent a night in jail.

   No, it was better to rely on the advantages that came from three decades of trying to eke out a living in the city. There was no shortage of humans stuck in the same position he was in, moving nowhere but sideways through life and occasionally finding themselves on the wrong end of the rules. They were a competitive race for sure, but if a favor granted could lead to a favor received down the line, they weren’t above helping each other out. A tip whispered here, a direction pointed there.

   Korkarin’s name would spark a cautious interest even among his own, but the ne’er-do-wells he knew were more trustworthy than the pointy ears in charge and could probably even drum up more information than his reluctant bartender ally, watered drinks or not. It was a good thing to have reliable friends in Mekan, but it was even better to have reliable information.

   Kolter placed his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up into a standing position. He cast one more glance at the bright and tranquil waters of the reflecting pool and then got back to work.

A Captain’s Duty Part Two

A Captain’s Duty Part Three

A Captain’s Duty Part Four

Whatever’s After

I was given a prompt to write about my perception of any kind of afterlife. This is probably a meandering mess of a thing, but I came up with this:

A golden city with jasper walls. Agates and sapphires, onyx and chrysolite, and whatever jacinth is.

I remember my first taste of Heaven, from under a down comforter in the middle of winter, snowflakes falling through my window with a backdrop sky so black it rang blue. I was young, borderline manic with an active mind, and so I had trouble sleeping. I’d rest my back against a cabinet set up at the head of my bed, one side of a sliding set of doors moved aside where rested a cassette player.

Classical music. That’s what helped me drift off at night. Elegant birds swimming through my mind to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Two lonesome lovers dancing in a dark, empty ballroom to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. A yearlong journey of whimsy and growth through Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The music played at my back, behind my head, through my ears, so gracefully behind the lids of my eyes.

Because of that,because I was such an imaginative child that I pulled things into my dreams, I often found myself also being affected by the books I read. Creepy crawlers terrifying me after the latest Goosebumps novel saw me to bedtime. Magic spells lighting up the sky like fireworks after tearing through whatever fantasy novel I ordered from the school book drive.

So yes, I remember my first taste of Heaven.

Twelve gates of pearl, and streets of gold so clear they may as well be glass. Eternal day that lights the paths of the pure.

My grandmother was a woman of God and wanted to bring me up on a path of righteousness, or – at the very least – general goodness. I was no stranger to prayer, though I struggled at keeping still with closed eyes while someone used their words to speak for me. I worked as a deacon in the church, collecting, counting and cataloging the weekly tithe. Most importantly (to me), I read the Bible nightly. No particular passages, but rather cover to cover (though I would regularly reread the stories that meant the most to me, or that I found particularly compelling). So I remember the winter night I first found myself in the book of Revelations, reading about this New Jerusalem, this city for the chosen loved of God while elsewhere burned a pit of fire. For the unrighteous. For the generally bad.

But in the city, there was no death, no sorrow.  No crying, nor any pain. I dreamed of these things, and this mountain city that was itself a divine temple. I dreamed of the crisp and clear air, and the laughter from within bejeweled walls.

But my fitful sleeping mind would take it further. I dreamed of walking to the cliffside, a dirt path laid out before me, surrounded on either side by snow that gave off no cold. I dreamed of looking down into a deep, green valley, one hand on a singular, twisting tree the rich brown of polished mahogany, capped with leaves of all different colors.

I dreamed that somewhere back behind one of those pearl gates, my always-absent parents were finally always-present and always-patient, waiting for me to return so that we could share just one meal together that didn’t end in yelling.

But I am not dead. And so that taste of Heaven, be it a true and wholesome thing, has yet to reach past the tip of my tongue.

And, undead, I have traveled through these years dipping my fingers into the afterlife whipped cream and licking celestial inevitability from them. I have sampled Sheol and its dead earth, feared the heat of Gehinnom. I have longed for the pleasures awaiting me after my second life and my second death, in olam haba. Or perhaps it would be a seat in the presence of Our Lord and alternatively a great nothingness should I not find the greatness necessary to fill my place beside Him.

In times of pain and anger, I’ve wondered if my struggles would qualify me for a seat in Valhalla should my eternal battle with depression finally trigger an aneurysm. I wondered how lonely the realm of Hel might be if not. Or perhaps it would be the realm of Hades, neglected and unfairly judged brother of Poseidon and Zeus. And after I take that journey across Styx, likely infuriating Charon with questions and observations, would Hades at least allow me the company of Persephone during the long winter months? Not for anything untoward. Just to talk for a while. Just to compare tastes in music. Would Handel be held favorably up to Amphion? Would Chopin be as admired as Orpheus?

These tastes of Heaven and Hell, of Eden and oblivion, of spectral realms and mead-filled halls, these tastes are exotic, they are ancient, they are unclear.

But I am not dead. And so these tastes leave my throat dry and my stomach uncertain of a meal.

Because maybe there is nothing. Maybe my good deeds and my mistakes and my pleasures and my sins will not be held accountable against a feather at the end of my life. Perhaps my heart is in no danger of being consumed by Ammit, forever damning me and barring my escape into the sun-lit fields of Aaru. Maybe my heart is destined only to be consumed by worms and I’m left leaving only memories for those still living behind me.

That would be a shame. That would be a shame, because it means I would have no chance to connect again with you. To see the way your right cheek dimples when you smile, and the way your eyes dart that same direction when you laugh. It would mean I never get to say sorry. It would mean I never get to tell you I love you every day until the very last star shudders one last flicker of light and the very last molecule stops its steady movement, freezing us in a picture we never got to take. One last still-frame before turning the lights off on the universe.

Or maybe we’ll resurrect. Resurrection is an option, too. And I feel I’d be a dung beetle, but maybe I’d turn into a caterpillar and you would be one too, and we could make a cocoon somewhere nice and safe and warm, melt ourselves down into a gooey pile of memories and love, reinvent ourselves as two beautiful butterflies and find each other again. Somewhere without nets. Somewhere without birds.

Maybe that will be our heaven, our Heaven, our Nevaeh (because after reading that Bible cover to cover, I read it back again): a cyclical chance to love and be loved again.

Because I can tell you one thing for sure: I don’t need to have died to know that life here without you is already Hell.

Things I Remember

My earliest memory is set in a living room I don’t otherwise recognize outside of old photographs. I sat in a cardboard box, and my dad pulled it around on the carpet like a car or a spaceship or like the little brown box it was.

I remember my dad’s drunk friend showing up every Christmas as Santa Claus, complete with a giant bag full of stuff. He would always pose for photos and pull out a couple gifts before staggering outside. I believed in Santa far longer than I should have.

I remember being infuriated with my stepdad and storming off to my room. I remember shouting “Shut Up” at the door, accidentally teaching my baby brother those same words. I remember frantically trying to get him to forget them.

I remember my stepdad flinging a briefcase down a hallway and catching my mother in the square of her back.

I remember my stepdad hosting a charity drive for poor children for Christmas and how I became Santa Claus for those kids. I wonder if they believed in Santa longer than they should have, too.

I remember my dad taking me on a shopping spree at Toys R Us. I remember how he let me break the spending cap. I remember how he smelled of sweat when he came home from work and hugged me tight, and how much I loved it.

I remember how he swore at me as I begged him to get up from my best friend’s lawn where he had drunkenly passed out in the middle of the day, and how he still swore at me as the ambulance loaded him in.

I remember the drunk, angry voicemail he left me weeks ago.

I remember finding out he adopted me despite knowing I was the product of an affair, and how he did his best to push his demons aside to try to be a father to me while his relationships crumbled.

I remember finding out I was adopted, on Valentine’s Day, days after losing my virginity, days after being broken up with.

I remember the way my grandmother (adopted) paused while getting milk out of the fridge when I told her my mom said my dad wasn’t my dad. I remember her confirming it. I remember every second of the bike ride to the mall to the only friends I had.

I remember telling them, “Well, I’m a bastard,” and my friends saying, “Well, yeah,” before realizing what I was saying.

I remember wanting to kill myself for the first time. I was in elementary school.

I remember the first drink I ever had. I was twelve years old, staying at my stepdad’s place to visit my little brother and little sister. I snuck up to the kitchen, to the OFF LIMITS liquids. I picked the bottle I liked most, a beautiful blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin. I remember filling a paper cup with it and trying to drink it like water and feeling like I was dying as it went down my throat. I remember gagging and coughing into the sink and drinking water straight from the faucet. I remember not being able to drink gin again for a decade.

I remember writing my biological father a letter when I was 16. I remember the letter he wrote back, though I lost it, and I should care, but I don’t, but I really do? I remember my mother coming up to my date and me at my brother’s birthday party. “He wants to meet you, but only after a paternity test. But he doesn’t want to pay for the test. I don’t know what to tell you, Jered, but if he’s not your father, I don’t know who the fuck is.” I remember my date taking my hand at that, and I remember falling in love for the first time.

I remember. I remember being bullied for liking comic books, and I remember how bitter I was when comic book movies became regular box office record breakers because now it was popular to like nerdy things. I remember 7th grade and breaking the arm of a kid who picked on me. I felt nothing.

I remember frantically running down the stairs as my (adopted, though I didn’t know it at the time and though it has never changed much in the grand scheme of things, I’m doubly irritated that he leaves angry drunk voicemails for me now) dad tried to escape my abusive stepmother. I remember how I didn’t see either of them for years, and how they put each other in prison, and how they moved to Belize, and how she died and I felt nothing because she was horrible to my grandparents, and because she once tried to gouge my dad’s eye out with a key. I remember how she broke his nose with a lamp while he slept. But she was his soulmate. I get it even while it makes no sense.

I remember moving to Los Angeles with no place to live, no job, no friends but the two men I left with, and hardly any money. I remember thinking I had the world in the palm of my hand. I remember my grandmother.

I remember my grandmother.

I remember how she always blamed an addiction or a circumstance and never a person. I remember when you knew she was frustrated to the point of tears, because she swore, and nothing hurt me more than hearing her swear. I remember her being the embodiment of Christianity, spoiling Christianity for me because I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone else who had an unshakeable, pure, unconditionally loving nature the way that she did. I remember saying at the church, at her memorial service, that she was the Christian Jesus wanted people to be and that no one else present could come close.

I remember the phone call when I found out she’d had a hard attack, and the last 30 seconds I ever got to speak to her, and how the last thing I told her was a lie: that my books were best-sellers, that I was flush with money, that I was going to be just fine, because I remember, too, that even on her death bed she was more concerned with the well-being of others.

God, I miss her so much.

I remember my grandfather and how he hated driving, and how he was a low-key road-rager. I remember how every time I was about to step out of the front door, he told me to be one of the good guys, and I’ve tried. I remember that my grandmother and I had it out a lot, but it was when my grandfather got mad at me and expressed his disappointment that I felt I had failed the most.

I remember when I was moving to Los Angeles and my grandmother was fretting because my plan was quarter-boiled that my grandfather told me he was proud of me because his children never took advantage of their natural talents and I was trying, at least.

I remember my sophomoric graduation speech. I remember winning Prom King, and I remember desperately clinging to that because I’ve never felt I deserved it, and because it felt for years like proof that people thought I was worth something after years of thinking I wasn’t worth anything.

I remember being broke in Los Angeles. A Canadian lighting tech groupie bought me two-for-one tacos from Jack in the Box so I could eat. I remember taking a British woman to the beach, and vomiting because I was hungover, and burying that vomit in the dirt because I was a 21 year old moron. I don’t think she saw me. She might read this, though.

I remember being broke in Los Angeles and how $25 was two weeks worth of food. Two-for-one cans of pork and beans. I remember my surrogate Colombian family who rented me a room occasionally knocking on the door for homemade food, because they were some of the best people I have ever met.

I remember falling in love in Los Angeles. I remember the first time she told me she loved me, when I was standing between her legs while she sat on a pool table in a bar, just before I left to pick up my friend and bring him out with us. I remember how embarrassed she was at letting it slip, and how she refused to take it back. I remember the weight of her head on my chest as she told me she saw us together for a long time. I remember our terrible break-up. I remember how she told me I wasn’t the guy she thought I was.

I haven’t been in a genuine relationship since, though I remember missing out on some genuinely amazing women.

I remember falling in love. One. Two. Three. Four. Five times, and having so much goddamn love besides.

I remember wanting to kill myself at 22. I remember writing my first book instead, and how I emailed my outline to my Advanced Placement Language and Composition teacher and how he said he thought it might make one solid book, and how it turned into a complex, sprawling half-a-million-words trilogy.

I remember having a fling with a woman in Denver that I thought could be it. I remember finding out it wasn’t. I remember writing my fourth book, one I had never planned on writing, one that I didn’t enjoy, and I remember publishing it, and I remember people seeming to love it while I hated it. I remember not feeling like I got closure at all.

I remember fucking up. A lot.

I remember crying. A lot.

I remember wanting to end it.

I haven’t.

I remember the first time someone asked me for an autograph. I remember the first time someone asked me for writing advice. I remember the first time someone asked me how to get through the day.

I remember the first time she told me she loved me. And the first time she did. And then when she did. And her. Her, also.

I remember realizing that none of them probably did, and that maybe I’ve never been loved.

But I’ve been read. And heard. And experienced, for better or for worse.

I remember every plane ride. To different states, to different countries. I remember every bed, air mattress, futon, couch, and floor I’ve slept on. I remember basically being homeless for two years.

I remember drinking a bottle of 99 Bananas and a bottle of Jack Daniels (right up until I don’t) and sobbing into my knees and passing out on a floor when I found out my grandfather had passed.

I can’t quite shake that one. I called a woman a bitch who didn’t deserve it. I’ve done a lot of terrible things.

I remember looking at myself in the mirror. Tired. Drunk. On drugs. Filled with hope. I remember writing poetry for people. I remember writing poetry for myself. I remember making love. I remember fucking.

I remember going to Red Lodge, Montana and going through thousands of photos in my deceased grandparents’ house and realizing with fullness that they adopted, essentially, a fourth child to raise to adulthood after having their own separate life raising three kids. I remember feeling like I was an outsider, then, undeserving of a family who never planned on but always accepted me. I’ve remembered damn near everything.

Damn near every awful, shameful, accomplished,hopeful, well-intentioned, mistaken, loving, intimate, selfish, charitable, cruel thing that I’ve done. I’ve remembered. I remember.

My mind and my memory never shut

The

Fuck

Up.

“Be one of the good guys.” Bompa, the world is a hard place. I’m just trying to be the best guy I can.

Read in Denver

“There are crazy kinds of love. The lava-hot kind of love that steals breath and rubberizes knees. The kind that rushes in like a bullet train and turns common sense into metaphors (just like this). It’s the kind of love that can start at the sight of a sign in the middle of the sidewalk at nearly four in the morning.

You know, Auburn and Gabby’s kind of love.

Read in Denver is the story of small-town, increasingly introverted Auburn Parks, a moderately successful romance novelist who desperately wants to publish science-fiction. It’s the story of Gabriella Baker, an energetic but private artist strick through with wanderlust, searching for her place in the world by taking life day by day. This is the story of two hearts colliding, two minds exciting, that crazy kind of love.

And everything that goes with it.”

About a year ago, I got the idea for Read in Denver while writing an emotional farewell letter to someone I cared deeply about. Around ten months ago, unable to shake it, I set aside the science fiction novel I was working on and set about trying my hand at my first-ever long form love story. I wouldn’t call it a romance, though there are romantic details. It’s more simply just a story about art and love and messiness.

I’ve said to people before that this the most honest piece of fiction I’ve ever put to paper, and so it was difficult for me to push through and finish it. I invested a lot of real things that were said or done, overheard and felt, injecting a fictional narrative with what I hope comes across as authenticity.

I messed with narrative structure. I inserted a couple odd touches and made sure to play with callbacks and mirrors. I put together a soundtrack with and few suggestions but no real directions on how and when to listen to it.

In the end, I’m not sure what I got. Less a book, perhaps, and more an experience. Hopefully a good one.

You can find it for the Nook here: Read in Denver

You can find it for the Kindle here: Read in Denver
Or you can order paperback copies here: Read in Denver
If you decide to take a chance on the book, I genuinely hope you enjoy it. If you enjoy it, I hope you share it with your loved ones. Cheers.