In the ruins of the Admiralty Office, Mardo stood where Indirk’s desk had been. The furniture in the room had all been relocated to its edges, reimagined as great piles of shattered splinters. From the floor, Mardo lifted a fine pistol made of black wood and steel. He held it in his hands. It looked so small in his great palms. But this was Indirk’s gun. It was the weapon that had killed Hado.
“The Commodore has survived,” said Half-Face Mirian, as he walked back into the large room. “Did it occur to you that your stunt might’ve killed them?”
“It did not, actually.” Mardo’s ears twitched beneath his mane. Listening to the echo of his magic still singing in the shattered glass outside, he slipped Indirk’s gun into his pocket.
“You did kill one of the Foremost Crew. I suppose you don’t feel any guilt over that, do you?”
“I do not.”
“Go to hell, Mister Mardo.”
“Every night.” Mardo sighed and crossed his arms, pressing his large hands over the wounds the crossbow bolts had driven into his arms. The deep wounds in his muscles didn’t slow him, but they hurt him horribly. He welcomed that hurt. “You are not without blame, Spymaster. You said I’d have more time. I was getting through to her. She was-“
“I’ve had it with you.” Mirian marched toward him and tore the chiming orb from his grip, angrily throwing it into the cold fireplace. “You should’ve told me you were one of them! You should’ve told me the moment we first spoke.”
“A secret life isn’t much of a secret if I speak of it so readily. You should know that better than anyone, Spymaster.” Some strange, sullen tiredness had fallen over Mardo. He spoke quietly and bitterly, but there was no fire in his words. He’d gone cold. “Sorcerers have to keep their identities a secret for a reason. I was already living a double life before you recruited me to spy on Indirk. Reporting to you didn’t change much.”
Half Mardo’s size, Mirian nonetheless shook a commanding finger at the man. “You tell me what you know! What are the sorcerers working on? What are they doing beneath the Embassy District?”
Mardo shook his head. “No.”
“What? Are you forgetting who I am? I’m a spymaster of the League Coalition!”
“It’s over your head.”
“Nothing’s over my head! Now you answer me or I’ll have you in for questioning!”
Footsteps scraped the floor at the end of the room, and they both turned to watch the Commodore pacing toward them. Gray Watch’s head of state looked unbothered by their surroundings. Coat dusted and hair a mess, the Commodore appeared uninjured, but walked with their head bent, eyes down, hands clasped behind their back. After a moment’s quiet, the Commodore looked up and blinked their pale eyes at the sorcerer and the spymaster. “My apologies for interrupting. However, Mardo, you’re fired.”
Mardo deadpanned, “How disappointing.”
“Please leave.”
Mardo inclined his head and slouched toward the exit.
“Stop!” Half-Face Mirian gestured angrily, marching toward the Commodore. “He knows military secrets that he’s refusing to divulge! I can’t permit him to just walk out.”
“Mirian,” the Commodore started in a snap of annoyance, but then took a breath, and forced a smirk onto their face. “Sir Spymaster, you are to abandon this course of inquiry.”
“Abandon?” Mirian huffed. “You don’t understand. There are facilities and…”
“And where do you think those facilities came from?” The Commodore glanced at the broken windows, pondering. “Actually, let’s put you to work cleaning up this little nest of spies you’ve allowed to dig in. Keep your focus where it should be. Take custody of that turncoat, Nymir. Use him to get rid of every spy in this city. If I find out you’re after my sorcerers again, we might have to reevaluate your priorities.”
Mirian went quiet at that, staring at the Commodore with a quiet glare. Behind him, Mardo chuckled and left the room.
* * *
Laester was the name of the malnourished young man, an Aldos refugee that had crawled out of the Warring Lands on his stomach and only reached Gray Watch a week earlier, who found the broken man shivering in polished armor in the alley. His friends had called him Lae, before they’d all been killed. Now, wrapped in muddy rags still stained with the blood of his father, whose body he had hidden under during the battle, Laester rubbed at his dirty face and crouched close to Phaeduin to say, “You’re dying, sir. I know these shakes.”
“Sunfire,” The armored man spat roughly, shivering. His hands were locked in a rigor about his chest and stomach.
“Nobody prays to Sunfire here, sir.” Laester was quiet then, watching how the bloodied, armored man struggled to move his hands. The dying man’s breathing was loud and troubled. From inside the armor, Laester could hear shattered bone scraping as the man breathed. The dire necessity of breath overcame the pain. “I would offer you comfort, sir, but I know these shakes. I was learning to be a medic. You’re broken inside, sir. If I had my kit, I’d give you poison to sleep. I’m sorry.”
“At my-…” The armored man struggled. He wore the armor of a Watch captain, but his helm was in the shape of a seabird’s skull. “In… help…”
“The psychopomp’s in town,” said Laester. “People have been seeing her in their dreams. It’s lucky to die with the psychopomp in town. She’ll make it easy to find the other side.”
The dying man let out a straining growl that had Laester flinching back, but only for a second. The man’s hands scratched at the armor again. “My… In my…”
“Are you trying to reach something?” Laester looked him over. “You’ve something tucked here at your belt, sir? Pardon my hands. I won’t rob you.” In the gap between the metal plates on the man’s stomach and his belt, Laester found a padded leather pouch and a glass orb inside. Laester grimaced at the object, the red liquid inside seeming to simmer. There was the slightest hint of song upon it, but Laester had never been skilled at hearing magic. Maybe it was a potent potion of some kind. “Is this it, sir?”
Taking a deep, grating breath, the man shook bodily, his tail convulsing out beside him. He struggled to reach for it.
“Don’t strain, sir.” Laester put the object in the man’s metal hand. “It won’t do you much good now but to hold it, but if it offers you comfort…”
“Step away from that man!”
Laester flinched to his feet and spun, finding himself facing a group of Watch soldiers, their gray armor and green tabards a bog-like camouflage that made it difficult for him to count them. No sooner had Laester seen them then they hurried forward in a clatter of metal, one grabbing Laester by the sleeve to pull him away.
“I’m sorry!” Laester said on instinct, trying to keep his feet under him. “I’m not the one who hurt him! I found him like this!” The soldiers just pushed him down the alley and then ignored him. Stumbling away, Laester watched, but all he could see were gathered soldiers. He couldn’t see the man in their midst.
“This is him?” The soldiers were speaking among themselves. “Take his helm off. Yes, that’s him. Phaeduin. On the spy’s list? Why didn’t anybody tell us sooner? Might’ve done it before he took the captain’s head, at least. What’s that in his hand? What’s he doing?”
Laester barely heard the sound of breaking glass. He heard the slightest whisper of what sounded like a hymn, felt the brush of some cold wind. He saw a flicker of red among the soldiers. Then, he felt something else. Inside of his body, inside of his chest, as deep as his bones, Laester felt something move. Like worms churning throughout his body, like a great thread suddenly unspooling and gathering in loops and then…
He looked down at his hands. There were drops of red beading upon Laester’s skin, like sap rising from wounded wood. It started just a few here and there, on his fingertips first, bubbling from under his nails, and then more. Rivulets of red ran down and gathered in his palms. He felt warm wetness around his eyes and mouth, and watched drops fall from his face. Red stains appeared on his shirt. In his ears, there was a roaring sound, a thrumming. He felt his heart in his head.
Laester couldn’t hear anything, but he looked up to see the soldiers grabbing at their bodies, their heads, to see them leaking red and pink fluid from their metal forms as though they were melting inside of their armor. Laester watched them falling before he noticed he’d dropped to his own knees. The pain crept up on him. When his skin split and began to empty, Laester didn’t hear himself cry out. He didn’t feel himself hit the ground, the world already going dark around him.
For a few strange moments, pain surged through him, but by then his body already seemed a distant thing. He watched the pain ravage his body like a fire burning through a home, more a thing of heartbreak than of torture. Distractedly, Laester watched shadow take the world, the alley fading, the writhing of the soldiers turning into a jittering silhouette behind which a figure rose. There stood an angular man, his tail churning, his head in the shape of a seabird’s skull, and there was a distinct red shine to his hands and his eyes. Before Laester knew it, that red glow was the only thing he could see. And the man’s voice was the only thing he could hear.
“How strange,” said the man. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. Good. Bend now to me, death. Take all the world as you like, but you’ll not have me today, and I’ll never cede my precious Myrel to you.”
Even that faded. All fell to darkness. Laester lay alone, feeling nothing, not even the ground beneath him. Yet he had the idea that he was in movement, sliding downhill toward something. Gradually, he became aware of the sound of humming. Someone was humming a little song here in the darkness. Laester thought that he was dead, but he also was not alone, and he felt some comfort in that. Surely, if hell was meant to be his destination, its harbinger would not have been the lovely tune of a woman’s leisurely humming. No, this was not hell. This was, perhaps, the one he’d heard so much about: that wise and comforting psychopomp.
Have read through the entire thing now, and I am FLOORED AND SHOOKETH AND [insert other modern lingo]. Loving Phaeduin doing his thing, even though we know what's going to happen to him eventually... Overall, this is an awesome, engaging read so far. The characters sell it well.