THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 10: Faces
“The cost of keeping a secret never stops rising.”
– Matthew Narsus, Narsus Shipyards CEO (183 PA)
Gavriel sat on the edge of the collapsed couch and squinted critically at the figure kneeling before him. The man wore a frayed black robe that fluttered like a funeral shroud in the frigid drafts sifting in through the cracked walls.
“Look at me, Arkan,” Gavriel commanded.
Arkan raised his face to his master. He was only thirty-four, but looked considerably older. The death of his infant daughter — at his own hands — left lines at his brow and a dark, haunted look in his eyes.
Arkan was from the farm colony of Cyrus. He had broad shoulders and a muscular build, but without the profoundly powerful look of a high-gravity native like those from Hadra and Orsin. The sun had darkened his skin and lightened his hair to a middling blond. Arkan could never pass for an actual Prian, not under scrutiny, but he would attract little attention among them.
“Do you understand what you’re looking for?” Gavriel asked.
“Yes, Lord Gavriel,” Arkan said. He bowed his head again.
“You will defer to the Arcadians. I’m sending you to support them, not command them. Can you do that?”
A muscle twitched in the farmer’s jaw, but he nodded. “I can, Lord Gavriel. If you say I must, then I will do whatever the bird-backs tell me to.”
The man’s bigotry was annoying, but his loyalty was stronger than his stupidity. Arkan would do his job. Gavriel dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
“Go change your clothes and then join the fairies in the Arcadian quarter,” he said. “Be careful and be discreet.”
“Yes, Lord Gavriel.”
Arkan rose, bowed and then left. A pair of hooded Emberguard flanked the splintered door, as still and silent as statues.
“Your approach is too hesitant, Gavriel.”
Xartasia stood primly a short distance away, holding her long wings delicately up off the dirty floor. In blatant defiance of Nihilist tradition, the Arcadian princess wore one of her pristine, expensive white dresses. This one was of pure white wool and trimmed in thick, soft fur. Xartasia’s black hair cascaded over her high collar in artfully arranged curls. Surrounded by filth and decay, her beauty was breathtaking.
“You are a man of power now,” Xartasia told Gavriel. “What need do you have to hunt from the shadows? The Prians are a fearful people. They fear their world and each other. You are a wolf among sheep. Strike from a position of strength!”
Gavriel scowled at her. “This is your first visit to Prianus, isn’t it? But I’ve been here before, princess. You have no idea what we’re facing. You’re right, in part. They’re afraid of each other, and with good reason. The Prians are a brutal people and will not take kindly to anyone encroaching on their territory. These are not simple Sisterhood thugs, Xartasia. And the criminals here aren’t the worst of our problems.”
“You still fear the Prian police?”
“I do,” Gavriel said. “And if you knew anything about them, you would, too.”
“I have little faith in the tenacity of humans,” Xartasia answered.
“Is that so?”
The Arcadian princess recoiled slightly at his tone. “There are… strong ones among all species.”
“You’re every bit as bad as Arkan,” Gavriel said. “We all deserve the same death, princess.”
“And you believe the Prian police will resist?”
“I’ve never known people as unyielding and dangerous as the cops of this world. With so much death and pain, this seemed a natural home for us. Prianus was the first world on which I tried to build my cathedrals. But the police hounded me night and day.”
The three knelt at Gavriel’s feet. Their red robes spilled around them like pools of blood. He touched each of their shoulders in turn.
“The police of Prianus hunt us,” Gavriel said. The room rang with the deep, sonorous notes of his voice. “They are dedicated and devoted, men and women of honor and integrity on a world that tests them to their limits. They are fools. They don’t understand the futility of their war, fighting against an impossible enemy. Fools, but fearsome fools. I need those equally strong and devoted. You are the best of my flock, the most deadly and the most loyal.”
Duaal huddled for warmth beside the ashes of the dying fire. Gavriel kicked the embers, scattering sparks in every direction like tiny, short-lived red stars.
“We are still but embers in the dark, my children,” Gavriel said. “If the police have their way, they will snuff out our light! I call upon you, my Emberguard, to protect us until the flame grows strong, bright enough to burn it all away.”
The tallest of them was a long-limbed Mirran with hair that hung around his striped shoulders in dirty green tangles. Hallax drew his nanosword and planted the point against the floor.
“Through death and life, Lord Gavriel,” he said. “We will serve and kill in your glorious name.”
Gavriel made a low, growling sound of frustration. “My Emberguard held them at bay for three years, but in the end, the police came for us. I only narrowly escaped, with a handful of survivors.”
He looked up at the two Emberguard beside the door. Hallax and an Arcadian man of surprisingly powerful build met his gaze unwaveringly.
“I’ve trained a new generation of Emberguard, my lord,” Hallax said. His hair had lost some of its verdant luster since Gavriel first discovered him, and there were jagged scars through the brown stripes of his skin. “The police will not drive us off again, I swear it.”
The Arcadian nodded, though his eyes were fixed on Xartasia.
“Through death and life,” he said in awkward, halting Aver.
Hours later, Xartasia wandered aimlessly through the drafty gray halls of the crumbling apartment slab. Men and women of all races stood, hunched and lay in the shadows, wrapped in black robes like filthy ghosts haunting the ruins that had killed them. They bowed and whispered as Xartasia passed.
So many of the Nihilists were sick. They coughed and shivered, slumped against cracked walls and lying in creaking beds. Those who were not yet ill would be soon. Prianus teemed with a whole array of deadly pathogens and dozens of Nihilists had died in those first months after arriving on Prianus. They found more cold, stiff bodies every morning. If the Nihilists shared anything in common with the Prians, it was their familiarity with death.
Xartasia held her sleeve over her mouth and nose. It would do nothing at all to protect her from disease, but it blocked some of the smell. Even so, it was almost unbearable. There was no running water in the building. Whether quakes had sheered through the pipes or the city authorities had shut them off, Xartasia didn’t know, but the result was the same. No showers or baths and no working toilets.
There was no washing away the smells of life and death.
There wasn’t power, either. The Nihilists cooked and warmed themselves with open flames. One miserable woman ventured out to steal a battery-powered stove, but Gavriel had dictated that the Nihilists would take no unnecessary risks that might bring down the wrath of the Prian police. The transgressor had been punished, thrown into one of the deep crevices in the cracked foundation of their new home. Every night, Gavriel’s Emberguard threw food and a bottle of water down to her.
Punishment in the Cult of Nihil was never death. As far as Xartasia knew, the woman was still down there, sobbing in the dark.
Though most of it had been spent to bring the Cult of Nihil to Prianus, there remained enough money — Xartasia’s money — to buy some small necessities, but it was against their code to ease the burden of a painful life. Life was suffering, so the Nihilists suffered. Death remained their only release.
Xartasia climbed a narrow staircase that led out onto the apartments’ slanted roof. The sudden glare of sunlight made the Arcadian princess slit her violet eyes nearly shut. She perched on the corner of the crumbling building, wings spread for balance. Icy wind ruffled her well-groomed feathers and streamed her long hair out behind her like a black banner.
The apartment block leaned dangerously out from the steep mountainside, overlooking the city. The entire building clung tenuously to the Kayton Mountains. Another quake might tear through the last bolts and topple the whole thing into the city below. Killing hundreds, Xartasia thought.
Yet the apartments remained. No one tore them down. Nothing was wasted on Prianus. There had been squatters living here before Gavriel and the Nihilists, people that had to be quietly removed. Gavriel’s transgressing stove-thief was not alone in her fetid crevice prison, though she was the only one still alive.
A gang of dirty, gangly teenage boys chased another child down the steep street, perilously close to the racing traffic. One of them caught up to their target and snapped a foot out in a hard, vicious kick. The younger boy tumbled, scraped along the asphalt and then skidded out into the road. A low-slung racer honked and swerved, but not fast enough. The car slammed into the boy, who flew back and smashed into the chipped sidewalk. Blood pooled around his shattered legs. He screamed for a few seconds before finally falling unconscious.
The pursuers and the car’s driver paused, staring, and then scattered. Several minutes more passed before someone else pulled over, jumped out of his car and knelt over the dying boy beside the road. He shouted a frantic call into his com, but not until he had taken the injured boy’s wallet. He was gone long before an ambulance arrived.
These were the people Gavriel feared will stand against them?
Xartasia turned away from the darkening red stain on the street and looked up into the sky. Birds and larger winged figures wheeled and dove. Arcadians. Over two hundred thousand of them lived on this horror of a planet — and most of those here in this city.
Not for much longer, if only Gavriel would act boldly…
But Xartasia dared not defy him. She needed Gavriel and the Cult of Nihil. She retreated back into the desiccated apartments. The police would arrive soon to investigate the boy’s death. It would be wiser to remain hidden.
