Shields & Ashes
Rannek woke abruptly, leaving behind the crashing of waves for the silent drip of a plastic IV cylinder. Every few breaths, the bag of clear fluid above sent another drop falling past the even bars printed on the outside of the chamber at a pulse so soothing he could not but close his eyes again and again. Each time, the surface of the solution inside the bag sunk ever so slightly.
There was movement about the room. Lying on his side, he could not see more than the drip, the tube running from its bottom to who-knew-where, and the olive curtain drawn up behind it. But he could hear. Sheets were being unfolded with a swish. Plastic crackled under the steps of a person, one single person, operating somewhere unseen. There were more noises coming through from the outside, but they did little more than confuse him. Machines screeched. Men shouted. Bugs buzzed, and birds cawed in the distance.
It wasn’t until he turned that Rannek realized the bliss he had left behind. His joints cracked as he moved, and a numbness had taken hold of his lower right leg. Looking up, he noticed that the roof, the walls, they too were mere fabric. This wasn’t a hospital, not even a proper room—he was in a tent. Just as he clenched his teeth and grabbed the railing of the bed to attempt another scouting, a hand held him back by the shoulder making him groan with pain.
»Lie still,« the Nysen said.
She did not speak after that, did not even bother to show her face. When he turned his head, Rannek only caught glimpses of the back of her gray tunic, and her hair, a ball of brown and white pierced by a long sewer’s needle. She couldn’t have been much younger than him. When he tried to speak, his tongue stuck to his palate like tar.
»Where am I?«
»Bitaab,« she said. »You came in by Krissin with the others, but you fainted on the flight.« She put down a clipboard on a tray mounted beside his bed and turned to meet his eyes, yet only for a breath before pointing a blinding light at him. He blinked as she reached for something. A wooden spatula pressed down on his tongue. »You’re malnourished, and your ankle is fractured. Other than that, you’re fine.«
»The others, who—«
»We have a boy who doesn’t speak, a private who can’t sleep, a giant who won’t wake.« She dropped the spatula into a waste basket and scribbled something on the clipboard. »And the girl.«
Pen. Rannek took a long breath. His nightmares had almost fooled him, but he knew better. Glane would neverlet her get taken. »Where?«
The Nysen gave him a queer look. On second glance, her face was that of a person well below his years, aged only by her deep scowl and the white streaks running through her hair. It wasn’t uncommon for the Women of Nys to face horrors just as grave as those faced by the Empire’s soldiers; even graver, some would argue. Their mission was purely medical in nature and forbade them from carrying weapons, making them an easy kidnapping target. He’d heard plenty of talk about the kinds of torture they got kidnapped for near the border, torture unknown to the men of God’s Army.
Whatever horrors this one had seen had not broken her; they had however made her stare quite unsettling. After a short silence, she circled his bed, grabbed the edge of the curtain behind the drip, and ripped it aside.
All hope escaped him in a sigh. On a bed parallel to his, chained to the railing and hooked up to a drip of her own, lay the girl rebel with the mousy face, last survivor of siwe Luor Nhi’s troop, fast asleep. »The other girl, where is she?« Rannek asked. »There has to have been another one, I’m telling you! Her name is Pen, she’s small, her hair’s a mess, she’s Tahori and—«
»Another one?« The Nysen pierced him with her eyes. »Figures.« Rannek opened his mouth to inquire her meaning, but bit his tongue when she ripped something off the crook of his arm. Before long, her fingers turned a valve on the drip and applied a small plaster to his skin. »You may rest a night or two more, but you’re free to move. There’s a crutch by the table.«
With dismay, he watched her turn and head for the zipped-up flap of fabric that constituted the door. »Wait,« Rannek said. »What figures? What’s your business?«
The Nysen stopped, yet kept her back to him. »How many of our soldiers went into the mines under your command?«
»… Ten.«
»How many are left?«
»I don’t know, I…« But he did know. Kysryn. Only Kysryn. »One.«
The Nysen scoffed, and turned with a face of pure disdain. »Yet I’m told you went in with two Tahori, and emerged with three. Does that sound just to you, prefect Lorne?«
Wrong, part of him wanted to say; they emerged with four. But the wretched liar had fled. »Each of the three saved our lives, one way or another. They deserved to live as much as us.«
»More, it seems.«
»You think me that powerful, but you’re wrong. Nothing of what happened in there was my choice.And even if, it isn’t that simple. Do you know why I asked for Penroe? Do you know who she is?«
»No,« the Nysen said as she zipped open the door, turning it into a blinding rectangle of light. »But I know who you are.«
And like that, he was alone but for the sleeping rebel’s company. He turned, and sat up groaning, clenching. That alone robbed him of his breath. Sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for the pain to subside, Rannek stared at the rack holding his IV bag and the cylinder. No drip tainted the stillness of the clear fluid held inside.
He could have the Nysen punished, if not expelled for her insubordination. He wouldn’t, though, and she claimed she knew that. I know who you are. Rannek sighed. It was far from the first time he had been told as such. Curiously, the people claiming so rarely referred to the same Rannek. In their minds, at the core of his character resided a specific person whose malevolence targeted them specifically. How was he to respond? The few times he had attempted to argue that no, he was not the particular evil they saw in him, but a host of different-faced evils all rolled up into one, the conversation had taken strange turns. Silence was cheaper, and sorrys were free. ‘An eager apologizer,’ Wellan had called him.
Rannek wiped away the tears knowing Wellan of all people would disapprove of them. If there were such things as ghosts, this one would not haunt him with guilt, but the continuation of his duties. Rannek imagined him standing across the tent telling him to suck it up . ‘A man’s measured by his deeds, not his faults.’ It helped somewhat until Rannek realized what deeds lay ahead of him.
Inform Wellan’s family. Find a replacement. Impossible tasks, and yet the list went on from there.
He would have to give a speech. He could hold his own throwing about words and phrases in the local tongue, but how was he to announce to an entire city that he had lost the doctor’s daughter? They might not let this mistake pass. They might not even let him finish. Torn apart by the mob—a dreadful notion.
Yet he wasn’t too sure what was worse: death by the Koeijians, or being removed from office to see himself declared the murderer of Penroe Kyetana. There existed no doubt that that was his destination. The Tahori needed someone to blame. The Empire needed someone to blame. Where they wrong, though? For the life of him, he couldn’t tell.
His eyes wandered around the tent. A heap of dirty rags rose from a waste basket in the corner, smeared all over with dirt and blood. His own clothes. They had redressed him while he was asleep, in the garbs that soldiers wore to go out on the town to drink, party, and gamble: an ironed white shirt, beige khaki shorts, and even a new pair of baby-blue briefs.
Apart from the rags, there was only medical equipment. A wheeled shelf containing gauze and syringes and all kinds of colorfully labeled vials. A pair of defibrillators holstered on a small generator. More racks, curtains, sheets, and folded up beds heaped up in another corner. The tent had clearly been designed for more than two patients. They had expected more.
Rannek took a closer look at his neighbor. The girl could have been Pen’s schoolmate, though the kids he remembered from his own school days in Grale would have made life hell for her. Beneath the blankets lay a body grossly elongated for someone of her age, her sex, anyone for that matter, like the Allfather had pulled at her head and feet until she could almost rival Glane in size. Some Nysen had proven merciful enough to put a pillow between her ankles and the metal railing at the foot of her bed that she was chained to.
On a tray between the heads of their beds, he noticed a small heap of cotton swaps seeped in blood. Among them, a metal appliance. A scalpel. Had they cut his ankle open? There was some numbness in his leg, but he couldn’t be sure. Rannek sighed. If only it were doctor Mireri treating him, in his office, lecturing him throughout. That he could handle. This, however…
A movement by the girl made him flinch, yet she only turned to the side, still asleep. Rannek picked up the scalpel. He wiped it against the bedsheet before putting it into his shirt pocket. Chains or not, there was no need to give her any ideas.
The hiss of zipper teeth sounded from the door, but he did not look up. Whatever the Nysen’s duties were, he would not disturb her. Should she scold him again, he would show her nothing but kindness and courtesy. Rannek imagined the ghost of Wellan shaking his head in disapproval. It made him smile, bitterly.
»I’ve never liked you, Lorne, but I still didn’t think you this much of an fool.«
The words cut Rannek and made him turn his head after all. In the door stood the last person in the Known World he wanted to talk to. »Colonel,« he said, his dry tongue smacking.
»You will shut your mouth until I’m finished,« Syrkanan said as he sealed the door again. »Two days it took us to get to the crash site, one more to get to the valley. I had resigned myself to the likelihood of finding you and yours either dead or huddled beneath some rock hiding like the sissies you are. I’ve even considered the possibility of you and the little brat being taken. Suboptimal, yes. But manageable.” The colonel took off his vest and flung it onto a rack with startling precision. On the shirt he wore underneath, Rannek spotted something he had never seen on the man before—sweat. »Whatever happened to her, we could have blamed on you. Whatever happened to you, we could have blamed on the Liberation. No, but that wasn’t quite simple enough for you, was it?« Syrkanan scoffed. »You lot are all the same. Politicians. Put on pup’s eyes all you like, I know there’s a part of you that revels in knowing what a hurricane of shit you have brought down on us. So spare me your blabbering, I only have one question, anyway.« He walked between the two sickbeds, put his hands behind his back, and leaned in until Rannek was sure he should have smelled something, anything; yet the colonel utterly lacked a scent. »Why on earth would you take the girl down into the mines?«
»They discovered us. We didn’t have a choice.«
»Wrong. You had plenty choices.«
»None of which seemed favorable at the time.«
»What a political way to put it.« Syrkanen glanced at the bed to his back. »The Nysen penned you in with your little Union souvenir, haven’t they? I’d commend the insult if it didn’t remind me of my ex-wife.«
So it wasn’t just the one that was upset with him. »I understand how this looks, but—«
»How it looks?« The colonel’s tone spoke of ridicule, yet his eyes stayed on him like a shark’s. »You really have no clue, have you? What you’ve done? What is going to happen because of it?«
Rannek swallowed. »I thought you had just one question.«
A twitch of the old man’s eye gave Rannek pause. All of a sudden, Syrkanan reached out to his right, grabbed the rack carrying the IV, and flung it into the pile of folded beds and sheets with a crash.
»So this is a joke to you!« Syrkanan bellowed, turning his back. He started pacing in the center of the tent. »Well, congratulations. Call me an idiot, but I never expected you to actually be honest with me.«
»I…« Rannek was flustered. The colonel was scratching the back of his neck and walking up and down, wholly unlike himself. »I don’t see any humor in my men dying,« Rannek said, »and I would have thought you of all people to understand. Wellan was my friend.«
»And what good did that do? I talked to the last survivor of his men, that man-child Kysryn. It seems the two of you acted less like leaders and more like married folk.« A joyless chuckle sounded from the colonel’s lips. »Then again, I’d heard those sayings long before you took flight at Klinngen.«
»What would you have done?« Rannek asked. »Wellan was as principled a soldier as any in God’s Army. Neither him nor you could have predicted any of the things waiting for us out there. So how exactly did he fail the Empire?«
»He forgot the first principle of war: knowing one’s orders. You ask me what I would have done? Simple. I would have known when I’m beat, and drawn the right conclusions.«
»And what a political way to put it.«
Syrkanan turned, and let his shark’s eyes gleam. »Fine, let me be clear: The moment you came to after the crash, I would have taken the girl and put a bullet in her head.«
Rannek stood up, putting weight on his injured leg, and felt his jaw shiver. Still, he limped up to Syrkanan with a raised fist. »How dare you,« Rannek said.
»I’m telling you what I would have done. You could’ve handed her to the enemy, too. So they get the doctor’s daughter. We still have the doctor, Lorne. Point is, you should not have gone down there, least of all with her.«
»Why?«
»Because of what you brought back up,« Syrkanan said, and pushed aside Rannek’s finger. »Because of what took her, because of what that circumstance means, for us, and for Tahor.« The colonel reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved a crumpled piece of paper, and shoved it against Rannek’s chest. »Neither of us can ever hope to manage this.«
Rannek took the paper. The image unfolding in front of him caused every hair on his body to stand up. It was a beast, a demon drawn in crude lines of charcoal, black hair sprouting wildly from its head and chin, framing eyes hidden in the slits of a nine-fingered hand. Bugs and spiders were drawn all across its skin, and fingerprints were smeared all over. Rannek had seen this before. It was only after a while that his eyes descended to the Tahori letters scrawled underneath the drawing. They were clumsy, and uneven, yet somehow even they looked familiar to him:
cursed
»You know what this is?« asked Syrkanan.
»I… I do.« Rannek could not take his eyes of the demon. »That thing took Pen.«
»It was drawn by your shaken Bitaabi friend. I trust the image is exaggerated?«
When Rannek looked up, the colonel’s face seemed free of hostility, if only for the moment. »I don’t recall it having that many fingers. Or bugs. Other than that, it—it gives the right impression.«
»It nearly killed your pet.«
»I’ve never seen such power,« Rannek said. The Nysen earlier, she said private Kirhonen was recuperating?«
»Don’t get your hopes up. He is in no condition to go after her, and won’t be for quite some time even if he heals as fast as he moves. After what he did in the jungle, I’d be surprised if his mind wasn’t per—«
Syrkanan sealed his lips and snatched the drawing away from Rannek. The girl stirred in the other bed, slowly coming to. Her beady eyes went wide as she tried to crawl away from them only to be held back by the cuffs around her ankles and wrists, gasping. Rannek raised his palms and limped to her bedside.
“What is your name?” Rannek asked. He ignored the colonel’s scoff behind him, and waited until the girl had caught her breath.
“Y—you’re the… Where am I? What have you done to—“ She paused and grew still. “Siwe.”
If she hadn’t remembered before, she did now. He could see it in her eyes. He’d been her leader through and through. “Had it been for me, he wouldn’t have been killed. My apologies. Luor Nhi was his name, correct?”
“We only knew him as siwe, me and my… they’re dead? All’a them?”
Rannek knew not how to respond, so he only nodded.
Tears ran down her cheeks and into the collar of the shirt she had been dressed in. It was similar to his, not just in color, but in size, making her look like an ell in a birk. Still, she did not break away from his gaze. “I won’t tell you a thing,” the rebel said. “You might as well kill me, too.”
“I won’t. I can’t speak for the colonel, but the man I take him for would have done so already if that was his wish.”
“You mean t’torture me.”
“No, we—“
»I don’t have time to endure your little gestures,« Syrkanan interrupted him. »Can she tell us anything about the savage?«
»It depends,« Rannek said. »What do you plan to do with her?«
»What are you, her lawyer? I’d give her a cell on base Klinngen, but even a walking fir like her would tempt the new recruits. You took pity on her, not me. I say throw her to the Watch.«
Rannek gave her a reassuring look. “Neither of us means to harm you. For now, you’re a prisoner. Just like the siwe meant for me.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true.” He knew she did not believe him. But Rannek didn’t care. Whatever villain he was to her would be a completely different person from the one the Nysen saw; between the two of them, he barely existed. “May I at least know your name? I’m Rannek.”
“I know who you are,” she said. “The pale prefect. They say you read our books and learn our ways t’disguse yourself with them. What foolery is that?”
»You’re not getting anywhere with her,« Syrkanan said. »Even I can see that, and I don’t understand a word she’s saying. You can walk. We will leave.«
Rannek ignored him. “You’re not wrong, I am a fool. A fool for courtesy. Give me your name, that’s all I ask.”
She glared at him some more before sighing. “… Ealea.”
“Ealea. I once met a powerful woman who carried that name. It means ‘wisdom’, does it not?”
“ ‘Mother’s wisdom’,” Ealea said. “The kind you won’t find in books and stories. The kind won’t make for a disguise.”
“Surely.” From the corner of his eye, Rannek watched the colonel pick up his vest and pull it over his sweaty shirt. “Tell you what, Ealea. I will ask you one more question before I leave.”
“I’m done talking.” She tried crossing her arms, and when the cuffs didn’t let her, she cast down her eyes defiantly.
“ ‘Know what you give up, for it is the mark of true strength.’ I believe the Ajan himself wrote that.”
»I do not like the names I hear coming from your lips,« Syrkanan said. A zipper hissed to Rannek’s back. »Do not make me drag you out myself, prefect.«
»I’m coming,« Rannek replied. He stood up from the bed, whose occupant had flinched for a breath when he had mentioned her grand leader. “I’m not asking on behalf of my people, I’m asking for a girl just like you. She’s out there, frightened, alone, and needs help. Would you rather have her die than let me be that help?” He found the crutch leaning against the desk, a small white square loaded with empty clipboards and pens. Rannek slipped his shoulder onto the pad. After the makeshift crutch that had carried him into the bowels of the earth and back, its softness and stability surprised him. He turned around and faced the girl. “Can you tell us anything about the man who attacked us and took Penroe?”
No reaction. The door had been fully opened, and the colonel had stepped out throwing him a look that told him not to linger. He pursed his lips. Villains make for poor saviors. He would talk to her again. He would get her to see reason, to trust him. A disguise—it nearly made him chuckle. Their culture wasn’t a disguise, on the contrary, it was a blade that could pry apart their distrust, make them engage with him. A blunt, imperfect weapon. Rannek hobbled to the door and had already put the tip of the crutch through it when the rebel spoke.
“All those books’a yours are worthless if you don’t know already. You saw that man. Felt him. He’s our salvation, and our revenge.Yet you’ll deny his existence until his hand closes ‘round your throat.”
“Who is he?” Rannek asked.
“A Cursed.” She looked up. “You won’t save her. She’s dead already.”
He opened his mouth, but it was too late. A hand ripped him out of the room and into the brightness of day. Rannek stumbled and almost fell. Soldiers crammed the narrow walkways, guarding his tent and disassembling others, carrying metal rods and provisions and artillery. Far above, two Krissins crossed the sky, filling the air with their distant screeching. The camp was in the midst of being taken down.
The colonel pulled him down a walkway between the tents. The earth was soft and carved up, luring his crutch into holes and making him slip as he struggled to keep up. It irked him. Although he had never made it to Bitaab, he doubted that the layout would differ much from the other facilities managed by the Westgrale Mining Conglomerate; why, then, were they walking on loose soil and not gravel, or asphalt? The smell, too, did not fit the WMC. He had expected the saffron taste of ground ore, the bloody dust of rock blown to bits and pieces on his tongue, yet there was only the scent of something singed.
»When we get back to Koeiji, you may take all your time chatting with your new pal,« Syrkanan said. »Until then, you’ll do as I say. We’ve got enough on our hands decamping. The sooner we leave, the better.«
»Glane—«
»Asleep and stable, for now. The Nysen tried to treat him for hours, against my orders. Took half their needles breaking on his skin until they saw there was no point.« The people around them all made way for Syrkanan, but less so for Rannek. »Your man Kysryn disobeyed my commands, as well. I told him to help my men since he bears no wounds, yet he won’t leave the little Tahori alone, even though his mind is clearly done for. I assumed you’d tolerate that kind of insubordination, since it… how would you say? ‘Comes from the heart’?«
Rannek ignored the colonel’s scoff. »They’ve been through enough. Can I speak to them?«
»Later. For now, know that they are safe and sound, and supervised.«
»Good.« Rannek bumped up against a soldier’s shoulder, and felt a jab of pain. »What about Bitaab? What about the people?«
A silence ensued as they shuffled by a file of soldiers that nearly dropped the steel beam they were carrying to salute the colonel. His nod in return was nigh imperceptible. »You’ll see.«
Syrkanan led them through paths that wound like snakes up the incline, toward the peak of mount Taab looming high above. Wisps of smoke stood there also, fading into the blue of the sky. Meanwhile, the singed smell grew stronger.
The camp built by Syrkanan’s men was further from the mines than Rannek had anticipated. As the ground finally changed to fist-sized pieces of gravel, he noticed that they had left the sounds of the jungle behind them. At last, a fence turned up, and behind it a ragged wall of wood and iron sheets that extended as far as the eye could see to both sides, its ends disappearing in vegetation. As they got closer, Rannek spotted hundreds of bullet holes punched into the makeshift wall.
This was where the fight took place. The fight for the mines. The fight that ultimately, as Wellan had assured him, the Bitaabi had lost. Yet what had happened afterward? What had the Liberation done with the miners when Syrkanan and his forces had showed up?
Over the gate, ‘Bitaab Mine’ was written in rusted metal letters, they too riddled with holes. Below, there had been an actual gate, a door whose hinges still remained, yet now hung bent and broken from the posts. The traffic of soldiers had gotten sparse. They walked through. Turned a corner. And suddenly, Rannek saw, and understood, and felt a dread creep into his heart.
They were standing at the outskirts of a ruin. Buildings had been reduced to piles of rubble, watchtowers to spidery metal arms clawing at the sky. The stench of things burning that should not burn was all around him. Cracks ran through the concrete roads connecting the five mines. The few vehicles parked aside them had blown up and burned out, their tires melted into the ground, even their windows reduced to blobs of molten glass hanging off the doors. Yet these, he realized looking ahead, were only the fringes of a deeper, ungodly destruction. Rannek sped up and fell, and stood up and fell again, making his way through the ruins followed by the colonel. Inside the destroyed storehouses and huts and mess halls he passed by, small fires were burning still, crackling. After the hall ended, he was given a full view of the entrances to the central three mines about five hundred birks ahead. It was then that his legs gave out.
The faces of rock around the mines were thoroughly black, as were the piles of ash and stone and death surrounding them. Trails of smoke coiled into the sky like beads on a dozen threads, sending aloft the last remainders of that which could still feed the fires. Charcoal stumps lined the edges above the mines and filled a series of deep crevices, mouths ripped into the rock by the collapse. This place was a graveyard. It was dead.
Rannek looked down at his hands to find them shivering. He had seen footage of this kind of destruction, footage taken years ago, before his term, before he had ever stepped foot on the peninsula of Tahor, during the last year of the Second War. Footage that was kept from the public. Orefire. A substance so cruel and all-consuming and shameful to its inventors, he had thought it a thing of the past.
The Empire’s past.
»What…« His voice died, and he had to take a breath. The burned rocks were cutting into his shins and knees, yet all he felt was numb. »What have you done?«
»What must,« Syrkanan said, resolutely. »They sent out an envoy to make their demands. Absurd doesn’t begin to describe what they were asking for in return for the miners. I would put it down to hubris, but we know the enemy to be too cunning for that. No, they knew we wouldn’t meet their price. They were counting on it. If they drew out the negotiations long enough, it would have become a public affair, a disgrace. A stain on the Empire’s rule. We had to send a—«
»A stain?« Rannek stared back at the colonel with disbelief. »Look around you. What is this if not a stain upon the earth? You murdered the people we’re meant to protect! What even distinguishes you from the enemy if you don’t even try to negotiate? What makes you any better than the Liberation?«
»Careful. You forget yourself.«
»No, you forgot your creed. To protect those that need protecting, isn’t that what you swore?« For the first time since he could remember, Rannek spat. »On second thought, even the Liberation condemns Orefire. No, you’re something lower than them, aren’t you? You haggard piece of Old Guard scu—«
Rannek caught the colonel’s boot straight to the jaw and went reeling to the side, landing on his shoulder. There, lying in the dirt, he spat a second time, only this time it was blood. »I did what was required,« Syrkanan said. »You’d do best to remember that the Old Guard you so fervently despise built the order you little shits still rely on. The Tahori will come crying to you, true, but only because you soak up every single tear of theirs. Ruling requires strength. You have none of it.«
»The day will come when we cease ruling over these people and start living with them,« Rannek said, fighting through the pain of his mouth, his joints, as he sat back up. »And it will be then that our ancestors pay the price for what you’ve done. And rightly so.«
Syrkanan chuckled. »Yet you equate me to the Liberation? Say that to the Chancellor and let’s see which one of us gets in trouble.«
To that, Rannek had no response. He struggled to his feet and looked the colonel deep in the eyes. All there was was resolve.
Rannek took a breath before storming at Syrkanan with a lunging fist. The older man slipped the punch with ease only to deliver another blow to Rannek’s temple, kick away his crutch, and watch him eat dust once more. Before he could get up, the colonel had already kicked the air out of him, and put a heavy boot on his back.
»What’s done is done, there is no point to this,« the Syrkanan said. »If Ullston will have my rank, let it be so; your flailing is the least of my problems. The news has already reached Tyn Ryswen. Soon, Hesryk’s acolytes are going to come for me like hounds for a hare.«
»I hope they do,« Rannek groaned, and sucked in a relieved breath when the boot was lifted.
»Chancellor Hesryk may have died, but your New Guard is growing stronger than ever. There might soon come the day when his lovey-dovey foolishness leads to your dreams coming true. When they start withdrawing. There will be bloodshed in the streets within the year.«
»No,« Rannek said. »It was but for Hesryk that the bloodshed ended. He reigned in the Gifted, and his only regret was not reigning in the likes of you.«
»Then I should probably thank you,« he said with a hollow smile. »It was your special kind of foolishness that moved the Chancellor to revoke Hesryk’s call, after all.«
Rannek stood up on wobbly legs and faced Syrkanan, whose chest was still, as if the scuffle had not even raised his pulse. »Nonsense. You’re talking mad. Why would—«
»I told you you shouldn’t have taken her down there. We could have kept the savage our little secret, but now my hands are bound. Too many of our own share your belief that the girl has some special value because of who her father is. They have questions, and the men they send to ask them won’t be the kind that are fooled by lies. I had to tell them. Once the Empire learned of the savage, their reaction could only be one.«
There are no Tahori Gifted. There cannot be. Rannek felt a hollowness in his gut unrelated to the aches of fighting. Syrkanan showed no sign of joking, no sign even of joy. He was telling the truth. »It can’t…« Rannek started. »They can’t! If the Gifted are allowed to return, then war is inevitable. What you’re saying is madness!«
»You’re the last one who should object. What’s that brute Kirhonen if not a breach of Hesryk’s promise? My actions here may have exacerbated their decision, true, but you paved the way just as much. Man up and accept the consequences.«
With that, colonel Syrkanan turned around and started walking back down the cracked road on which they had come, leaving Rannek amidst the smoldering ruins. His legs still unsteady, the prefect took a step, then two, meaning to stop the other man, but he may have as well flapped his arms and attempted to fly. One more time, he fell. Only this time, he lacked the strength to raise himself up again.
»We leave at 0980,« Syrkanan said over his shoulder. »If you’re not ready by then, my men will take you. I advise you do not attack them, too; they lack my restraint.«
He turned a corner and was gone. Rannek looked down at his hands, cracked, miserable things, shivering from the rage that still welled inside him. Hesryk’s call—revoked. It was madness. He could not accept it, yet he felt utterly powerless.
A familiar notion that was to him. Long before the day he took office, before he got the call even, Rannek had grown acutely aware of what a prefect could and could not do. It was an intermediary position, an envoy of the Empire sworn to make the locals understand their position, a position of reluctant acceptance of decisions made far from their shores.
And yet, he had contributed to his own demise. For years, Rannek had impressed Pen’s importance on his superiors, and now, they knew the truth about her kidnapper. His mind raced trying to come up with a lie that would sway them to rethink revoking Hesryk’s call knowing that he would never manage to tell it convincingly. And even if so, there were other who would have to go along—Syrkanan would have to revoke his report, and Kysryn would have to back him up, as would Glane, and…
He picked up a rock from the ground. It was rough, and black on one side, rubbing ash all over his palm. The other side remained gray, striped with thin lines of white. He thought of Ibiko’s people. The Liberation taking them hostage. The Empire putting them to the torch.
To the citizens of Koeiji, he was the Empire.
He thought back to when Ibiko had first showed up in his office. He had waited half a day without asking for water, borvin, anything but a minute of his time. His eyes had been tired, and frustrated, and yet so friendly, never once worrying Rannek that his frustration would make him lash out. He thought back to the concern he had shown whenever Pen had been in danger. How he had caught her when she fell. How he had kept her safe.
That friendliness could not survive this, he realized. It would turn sour, like the kind spirits of so many Tahori who had lost everything at the hands of men like Syrkanan. Men like him. Ibiko would want justice, justice past the word. He would want blood. He would want revenge.
He should.
For a long time, Rannek sat there among rocks turned half-black, among a thinning forest of smoke trails feeding the cloudless sky, and brooded. His mind turned to his options, his conscience, his fears, and finally his pains. His jaw hurt. Syrkanan had handed his ass to him, but more infuriatingly, he had pulled himself back. Rannek counted the recent fights he had gotten into and lost. The siwe. The savage. The old colonel. Each had bested him, and each had let him live by nothing but their mercy, no, their disinterest. What threat could a perennial loser ever pose to them, he wondered.
He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the metal stick within. A thin film of blood still clung to the spine of the scalpel where it ran into the grip. Whether it was his or the rebel girl’s, he couldn’t say. It was only red smeared on silver, muddled by the ash from his palm, glistening in the sun’s unrelenting light. The smoke trails in the sky were forever thinning, but never seemed to fade.
And feeling as pathetic as he ever had, Rannek Lorne started musing about news way to lose, ones that could serve a purpose chosen by him, be it ever so dismally, disappearingly small.
Martin Surga 