Retribution, p.31
Retribution, page 31
A surprisingly young woman with russet brown skin and tight black curls stood a half step in front of the others. “Ascender Grey. Or…Arthur Leywin, is it?” She batted her thick eyelashes at me innocently. “A pleasure to meet you. My grandfather found you to be such an interesting and complex problem as a professor. I’m interested to better understand why.”
As she spoke, her words crisp and sharply enunciated, the family resemblance became clear. “You are Augustine of Highblood Ramseyer, then? Valen’s sister?”
“Cousin,” she said with the slightest shrug of her thin shoulders. “Though we were raised more as siblings. I am a graduate of Central Academy—a fact that I now consider to be a great shame, since my time there was over before your short tenure as a professor began. Seeing your performance at the Victoriad, I’m sure your class was most interesting.”
“You seem to know a little about me, Lady Ramseyer, so I’m sure you also know why I’m here,” I said, pointedly scanning the five highbloods.
She raised a delicate hand. “Please, do you plan to discuss business here on the stoop as if we were shady accolades dealers?” Her thin eyebrows rose, and there was a sparkle in her dark eyes. “Let us retreat to more comfortable accommodations so we might discuss your purpose in Xyrus like civilized people.”
The other four highbloods led the way, while Augustine stood aside and gestured for me to follow. I took a moment to scan the courtyard and what I could see of the Courthouse building. The squadron of guards led by Idir was waiting at the base of the wide steps, but there was nothing else—no one else—to be seen.
As I moved past her, Augustine reached out and slipped her arm through mine. She was a head shorter than me, and her slender arms looked like frail sticks next to mine, but there was a liquid grace and abiding confidence to her movements that revealed no fear of me.
As we walked arm in arm through the grand halls, I found my thoughts drifting back to Central Academy. I hadn’t had much time to consider the chaos I had left in my wake. Those kids, the ones I’d had the most impact on—Valen, Enola, Seth, Mayla…
Did I do more damage than good, by making them trust me only to break that trust and disappear? I wondered.
Who knows what kind of propaganda Agrona and his minions had spread after the Victoriad.
“The kids from my class,” I began, then hesitated, unsure exactly what I wanted to ask—or if I even had the right to ask given our situation.
“No blame was placed on them, and they were given ample opportunity and resources to recover from the shock,” Augustine confirmed. “My grandfather may be a hard man, but he is dedicated to his academy and its students.”
That, at least, was a relief. I knew Alaric would have no such protection, but I trusted the old drunk to be able to look after himself.
Realizing I was letting sentimentality drag my focus down, I began drawing from the same well of impassivity that had helped me survive in Alacrya.
Augustine guided me through several short corridors before we arrived at a large lounge. Like the rest of the Courthouse, the floor was of polished granite, while the carved walls were all brilliant white marble. Arched windows bathed the lounge in light, which only made it even brighter. Dozens of fine chairs and couches were carefully arrayed through the room, broken up with a hundred different kinds of potted greenery. One wall was dominated by a massive marble bar, behind which were shelves upon shelves of bottles.
At the center of the lounge, I noticed that a table had been moved and several seats rearranged to make room for a small round table topped with a Sovereigns Quarrel board. Two high-backed, velvet-cushioned chairs had been set on opposite sides of the table.
The four silent highbloods stood aside, and Augustine led me to the table. I pulled one chair out and offered it to her. She veiled her surprise well, smiling and inclining her head in thanks as she took a seat. I pushed the chair in slightly, then sat down myself.
“You’re familiar?” she asked, her index finger tracing an ornately carved striker.
“I’ve played,” I answered, examining the board. The pieces were exquisitely carved, each caster, shield, and striker unique. Her pieces were crafted of blood-red stone, while mine were marbled gray and black. “I’m not here for games, though, Augustine. You know that.”
Her smile widened, but she was focused on the game board and didn’t meet my eye. “Blackbend City fell to you in—what?—twenty minutes?” While she stared at the pieces, her fingers caressed the outline of her lips. “Clearly strength of arms is a poor counter to your power, Arthur—can I call you Arthur?” she asked, interrupting herself as she looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded, and she continued. “But Xyrus is a different beast. Hundreds of Alacryans have made the city their home, and there are five soldiers posted here for each civilian. Many Dicathians have already sworn allegiance to the High Sovereign. Do you plan to go street by street, house by house, kicking in doors and dragging away families—children, servants—indiscriminately?”
Picking up a striker, she moved it in a line deep into my end of the field. An aggressive move.
“Usually soldiers surrender after I’ve destroyed their leadership,” I said evenly, maneuvering a caster to counter her striker.
She bit her lip, then moved one of her own casters to support the striker. “Such bravado, Arthur. I thought you wanted to have a discussion. Do you expect me to treat with you when you keep holding a blade to my neck?”
I shrugged, carelessly repositioning a shield. “I didn’t come to negotiate. I came to retake the city. Bloodless is better, but I’m prepared to do what needs to be done, just as in Blackbend.”
“So what then?” Her fingers tapped on the hardwood table. “You want us”—she gestured to the others—“to take our people and go home? Just that simple?”
“Pretty much. And you can take anyone who bent a knee to Agrona with you.”
She leaned away from the game as she carefully scrutinized me. “Before we go any further, I have a confession to make. Please, stay your hand and listen.” Augustine shared a look with one of the others, who gave her a sharp nod. “Every Alacryan soldier at our disposal has already been dispersed throughout the city. Their orders are simple: if any harm comes to me or my compatriots, they will start butchering the people of Xyrus.” She held up her hand again, her features softening. “Don’t mistake me; I am not a monster. I was placed in charge of our blood’s expansion into your continent specifically because I was eager to work alongside the people of Dicathen, to learn from them and guide them into Agrona’s service.
“But,” she continued, and for a single instant her composure broke, and I saw real fear flash across her fine features, “just as you said, I will do what needs to be done. Because, on my blood’s honor, I cannot simply give you this city.”
I looked down at the game board, offering her no outward reaction to her threats. Instead, I said, “I believe it’s still your turn, Augustine.”
Biting her lip, she slid the striker through the newly formed gap in my line. “I know that you carry no fear for yourself,” Augustine continued, louder and more confident, “but you aren’t callous with the lives of others. Even in Alacrya, surrounded at all times by enemies, you took pains to ensure the students in your care were well tended to, students like Seth of Highblood Milview and Mayla of Blood Fairweather in particular.”
“Surrender yourself and the people of this city will be spared,” one of the other highbloods added, his honeyed baritone positively oozing with pompous arrogance.
Feigning a stifled yawn, I withdrew my forward caster in order to block her striker from my sentry. “I get the feeling you’re not giving the game your full attention.”
Her jaw clenched as she shot the other highbloods an uncertain look. Walter of Highblood Kaenig nodded, and she slid back slightly from the table.
Several things all happened in the same instant: the air all throughout the room rippled violently, and suddenly the lounge was full of armed and armored knights; several overlapping shields of translucent mana appeared between me and Augustine; and somewhere in the distance, horns began to blow.
I heard the whistle of a polearm swinging, reached up and caught the shaft, then twisted my wrist so the wood shattered. My attacker bore the symbol of House Wykes on his breastplate. I recognized the symbols of several noble houses among the crowd of soldiers: Wykes, Clarell, Ravenpoor, Dreyl, and, most surprisingly of all, Flamesworth.
By then, Augustine had kicked aside her chair and retreated into the press of Dicathian soldiers. The other highbloods were busily scuttling from the room like rodents fleeing a burning barn.
I stayed in my seat. No one else attacked immediately, so I went back to perusing the game board.
“These men, these Dicathian-born men, are willing to fight to keep you from returning things to the way they were!” Augustine shouted over the sudden noise of a hundred men in armor clanking against one another. “Doesn’t that give you any pause? Or are you so single-minded that you would murder even your own people to ensure the world is as you think it should be.”
There was a wildness in the young woman’s dark eyes that reminded me of a cornered shadow panther.
I took a second to look from face to face, seeing in them a stoic certainty that I found surprising. The mere sight of me conjured abject terror in the Alacryan men, but these knights of Xyrus’s noble houses seemed so self-certain. Like the little carved men on the board, they simply went where they were told, oblivious to the ramifications of their actions or their own lives.
“You think you’ve outmaneuvered me,” I said, pressing my index finger down on the head of the striker piece that was now sitting behind the line of my shields, dangerously close to my sentry. “You’ve isolated a weakness and exploited it. Left me with no further actions to take.” Picking up my sentry, I moved it next to the opposing striker. “But I don’t forfeit, Augustine.”
I let my gaze fall heavily on all those nearest to me. “So, strike me down.”
Not even a breath interrupted the silence that followed.
Then the command split the quiet, resounding off the marble walls. “Attack!”
A Dreyl knight lunged forward and thrust his sword at my side. A spike of ice flew at me from behind Augustine, cast by a man in Clarell colors. Then another attack came, and another, and soon I was at the center of a barrage of blows, some magical, others by sword or ax or spear.
But they crashed against the relic armor, which unfolded over my flesh in an instant. I stood, absorbing the brunt of the assault without fighting back. Five seconds passed, then ten. At twenty seconds, there was a lull in the assault as the reality of the situation started to dawn over the knights.
In that moment's hesitation, I fell on them like a nightmare fox among raptor squirrels.
Ripping the sword from the Dreyl knight’s hand, I thrust it into another man’s chest, took him by the throat, and hurled him into a Flamesworth knight’s oncoming spear. Activating Realmheart with a flicker of aether, I deflected a roiling ball of molten metal, sending it into the face of a Clarell soldier at the same time as I conjured an aether blade and twirled it around in a wide arc, cutting down several more men.
While the knights had been charging forward, Augustine had been retreating, sliding back through the wall of Dicathians until she was at the lounge door. She didn’t flee farther, didn’t run for her life or attempt to disappear into the streets outside. Instead, she stood and watched. Entranced or petrified, I couldn’t tell.
Directing aether into my fist to form a concentrated blast, I turned toward a group of conjurers bearing the Wykes’ house crest. “Please, General Arthur,” one of them begged, “I served with you at—”
The plea cut out, swallowed by the forge-fire roar of aether blasting the conjurers to pieces.
With the efficiency of a lumberjack splitting the day’s wood, I cut through the remaining soldiers. Dozens upon dozens of them fell into bloody and broken heaps upon the granite floor, their blood pooling until the gray vanished beneath a wet red carpet.
The fight barely lasted a minute before the last of them fell.
I wiped blood from my face and turned toward Augustine. To her benefit, she didn’t run. As I started in her direction, she watched me approach like one who had accepted death.
The room was silent again. And now that it was, I could hear the sounds of shouting and spellfire in the distance.
“Order your soldiers to back down,” I said, my voice an apathetic void. “No more Dicathians are to be harmed. All Alacryans are to gather and prepare to relocate. If this isn’t done now, I’ll spare no one.”
Her dark eyes were unfocused, looking through me into the middle distance where the Dicathian knights’ corpses littered the floor.
“Lady Ramseyer,” I snapped, and she jumped and stumbled backward, horror dawning across her face.
She began to retreat clumsily backward, her disbelieving gaze locked on me. Behind her, I saw the swishing robes of the other highbloods vanish around a corner.
“Don’t test me further.”
Nodding frantically, she began running. Then I was alone.
My eyes shut, the lids ponderously heavy. I was tired. So tired. It wasn’t weakness of body or my core that weighed on me, but a fatigue of the spirit.
I released my connection with the relic armor, and the black scales enveloping me fell away into nothing. Forcing my eyes open, I took in the carnage I’d wrought.
Shining steel was muted with red-brown smears of rapidly oxidizing blood. Severed appendages sat like gruesome islands amid the sea of scarlet. The colorful emblems of Xyrus’s noble houses were indistinguishable beneath the stains.
So many of our own had been ready to welcome Agrona even before the war started to turn against us, it shouldn’t have surprised me that with Alacrya firmly in control, some people had fully sworn themselves to his service. Fear alone would drive many to that end, and greed many more.
Still. As I stared at the corpses, I knew these deaths were a weight I would have to carry.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d stood there in silence, deaf to everything but my own inner turmoil, when the sound of hurried steps drew me back out of my own emotions.
Jasmine marched into the room, stepped in blood, and pulled up short. Her eyes went wide, then focused on me. She must have seen something in my appearance that gave away what I was feeling, because her normally hard exterior softened.
I realized Regis wasn’t with her and reached out to him. I could sense him outside, helping to break up the fighting.
“You okay?” Jasmine asked after a moment.
“I…” When my voice came out raw, I bit back my words, hesitant to look weak in front of her. Fool, I chided myself, remembering why I’d asked for her to come with me in the first place. “I’ve worked so hard to keep this war from becoming a slaughter,” I continued after a moment, “but these men…”
I trailed off again, sweeping my hand across the room in a futile gesture. “I didn’t give them a chance,” I finally finished.
Jasmine nudged a body over with her toe so the breastplate was facing up. There were very few identifying features left of the knight, whose face had been carved by an ax, but clear on his breastplate was the symbol of House Flamesworth: a stylized rose, its petals formed from gently curling flames. Her face remained expressionless.
“They had their chances,” she said flatly. “Many of them. And they made their choice every time.”
She trailed between the bodies, each step leaving behind an empty patch of granite in the blood. “I didn’t realize my father had been released from his cell under the Wall.”
Trodius Flamesworth had sent his own daughter away for preferring air-attribute mana to fire. He had planned to sequester himself and his noble friends in the Wall to save themselves from the war. And he had betrayed the trust of his own soldiers when he refused to drop the Wall on the army of mutated mana beasts the Alacryans had conjured from the Beast Glades, an act that had directly resulted in the death of my father.
But he wasn’t some outlier of villainy inside an otherwise altruistic institution. No, every leader of every one of these noble houses had done things just as selfish, cruel, and treasonous, of that I was certain.
“Durden still blames himself for your father’s death, you know,” Jasmine said, seemingly out of the blue.
I felt myself sag and leaned back against the bar, pushing a knight’s corpse off the polished surface to make room. “It wasn’t his fault. That battle…even the strongest mages could have fallen prey to those beasts.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t his fault,” Jasmine said firmly, still pacing through the slaughter. “It was Trodius’s. He was careless with the lives of men who trusted him.” She stopped and pointed down at a torso that had been cleaved free of its bottom half. “Lord Dreyl was careless with this man’s life.” She nudged a mage in blood-soaked battlerobes with a toe. “And Lord Ravenpoor with this man’s.” She stopped, her feet on either side of a severed head. “And Trodius sent this woman to her death as well.”
Our eyes met. There was fire behind the red of her irises. “Don’t punish yourself for the deeds of others, Arthur.”
I had to clear my throat before speaking. “This war won’t be over when the last Alacryan leaves these shores. We have too many enemies who were born here and call themselves Dicathians.”
Jasmine nodded, making her way to my side. She reached across the bar and pulled down a bottle, swirling the golden liquid inside. There was something distant and haunted in her face, then she tossed the bottle away. “Even continents have to exorcise their demons, I suppose.”
More footsteps announced the arrival of several people. Jasmine’s hand went to her daggers, but I could feel from my connection with Regis that the fighting was over. Augustine and her cohorts had pulled back their troops, as I’d ordered.
I pressed my palms hard into my eyes until white static played across my vision. Then, with a steadying breath, I moved quickly to the doorway, not wanting to have any more conversations in the lounge-turned-abattoir.
