Chapter Sixteen - Capital Punishment
The wolf circled the three of us, like some kind of drill sergeant, its eyes never leaving us for a second. It didn't look to be in a good mood at all, which surprised me because I just couldn’t understand what was going on. I'd heard stories about conduits, about how they typically complimented their mage's personality. Cameron was feisty, though, not like a disciplinarian as this wolf was. However the hell those two were “complimentary” was beyond me entirely.
But it continued to circle us, its face curled into a snarl that would have gotten me ready to strike on any other wolf. I couldn't really figure out what it was doing this for, why it seemed so… whatever it seemed. I was so damned confused by this that I was ready to draw the sword anyway. I kept my cool, though. Didn’t want to trip the thing up.
The wolf stopped in front of us and growled, for whatever reason. My hand drifted closer to my blade on the off chance it turned violent. The wolf didn’t move, though. It stood there, it growled, its black eyes were locked on Cameron, much like earlier. When it finally jumped at her, Cameron defensively fell to the ground and crossed her arms in front of her.
“Git off, ya beast!” she screamed at it.
The wolf didn't, however, and kept her pinned to the ground. “You! Are! Putiful! Have you ever considered fighting, maggot?! You fight! You live!”
Sari rolled her eyes. "She's a little girl, asshole."
The wolf hopped off of Cameron and stood on its hind legs to look Sari square in the face, except that standing like that actually made it taller than Sari, by almost a full two feet. That bastard was bigger than I thought it was. In a show of force, it growled at her and bared its teeth. "You weren't asked your opinion, maggot!"
"Don't call me that, assface."
"You speak when spoken to, soldier! That goes for each of you! Each! Of! You!" It dropped back on all fours. "There are no little girls or little boys anymore, maggot, this! Is! War! You fight! Or you die! And if you don't fight, you get no pity from me!"
I rolled my eyes. I wasn't sure what the hell this wolf was trying to do, but it was pissing me off. Either way, it wasn't exactly doing its job as Cameron's connection to pure magic if it was too busy busting everybody's balls like a hard ass. I just leaned up against the carriage and waited for the wolf to understand what was really going on.
Unfortunately, my actions ended up pissing it off. The wolf ran up to me and clamped down on my leg hard. I saw blood pouring from where its teeth punctured my skin, and the pain radiating from the wound was more severe than anything I’d ever felt. I drew my sword and strongly considered killing the wolf right then and there, robbing Cameron of her conduit, but I stopped myself before I could make that mistake.
The wolf took notice, however, and let my leg go. It then backed up and stood up on its hind legs. “I think you don’t take this seriously, maggot!” I wanted to tell it to shut up, but unfortunately my tongue decided to disappear into my throat as the wolf started changing. The head was still that of a wolf, and its body remained covered in its weird green, gray and brown fur, but it grew into a more humanoid shape. It was almost like a changer, but I knew that didn’t quite explain it. In less than a minute, standing before me was a warrior with a wolf’s head, fur and tail.
Those dark eyes were the same, though, meaning that this was still the same creature that had damn near taken my leg out of commission.
“It’s time to teach you maggots what war means!”
The only one of us who could actually speak was Sari. All I could hear her say was, “What in the --” and then I got a face full of wolf fist.
I hadn’t even seen him move. One second he was a good five feet away from me and then the next second his fist was connecting with (and potentially breaking) my nose. I staggered backward, against the carriage. I saw stars, which didn’t help at all because they just blocked my view of his foot making contact with my stomach. I doubled over as the air was forced out of my lungs, but only just before his knee hit my chest like a rock. I hit the ground on my hands and knees. I could barely breathe, barely see and really barely comprehend what had just happened to me.
Naturally, he wasn’t done. He must have balled his hands together when he slammed them into the back of my head, or else his hands were just that large that it felt that way. Either way, he hit me and I was flat on the ground almost literally eating dirt. I so very much wanted him to be done with his “lesson”, but he obviously wasn’t, because he picked me up and hoisted me over his head. My vision was just starting to clear and the first thing that I saw was Sari and Cameron upside down for whatever reason, and then he dropped me onto his knee so hard that I was damned lucky my back didn’t snap like a twig.
Not that it didn’t hurt like a sonuvabitch.
I rolled over onto my side, hoping that if I just didn’t see him, he’d cease to exist or something like that. Of course, that wasn’t the case, because he knelt down and yelled in my ear. “You are a sorry excuse for a soldier! You are a sorry excuse for a housewife! You are just a sorry excuse! If the battle were down to you and me versus the enemy, the enemy would laugh at you!”
Oh sweet Jesus I wanted him to shut up. If only I could feel anything in order to grab my sword, I’d try to stab this bastard while he was gloating.
Lucky me I saw my sword right there in front of me. I tried to reach for it, but I couldn’t actually tell if my arm was moving or not. At least, I couldn’t tell at first. When he grabbed the sword and pulled it away from me, I realized that I had actually been moving, otherwise he wouldn’t have had reason to grab the sword.
“This is a crutch!” he shouted. He was always yelling or shouting. Didn’t he have a damned indoor voice? “You cannot rely on crutches on the battlefield!”
“I don’t!” I shouted, or at least tried to. It actually came out as “Ughydof” or something like that. I was more impressed that I had enough air in my lungs to make noise.
“That is horseshit, maggot!” He punctuated each word with a kick to my side so strong that I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d punctured a kidney. Hell, at this point, I would forcibly remove my own kidneys just so that the extreme blood loss would bring me relief.
“Okay, stop!” Cameron shouted.
And, to my surprise, he did.
I flopped onto my back and saw that he’d not only stopped kicking me, he’d even shifted back into wolf form and was just patiently sitting there, glaring at me. At one point, he bared his teeth and growled, but then he stopped.
“What the hell?” I asked, which came out as “whuhfaell”, thanks to my inability to speak properly. I hoped Cameron knew a healing spell, otherwise I’d need the rest of the trip just to heal my face.
The wolf turned away from me to presumably look at the girls. “I hope you two aren’t as pisspoor as this waste of a meatsack.”
Sari had suddenly come up beside me and was helping me to my feet. Well, she was helping me do something other than lying on the ground doing a corpse impression. Eventually, she just dumped me in the carriage. For once, I was happy we’d left Jaide with Trafus, otherwise this would be awkward. “You okay there, Cres?”
“How do I look?” I asked. This time it actually came out right.
“Better than you did when we met.”
“Ha. Ha.”
She must have turned away from me to talk to the wolf. “What the hell was that for?” she asked it.
“You three couldn’t keep yourselves alive on the battlefield if I left you in a steel reinforced building! How you’ve made it this far is beyond me! By the time you’ve figured out why you’re here, you’ll have an arrow in your skull!” I assumed that last part was directed at Cameron in particular. I already knew what I was doing, and so did Sari.
“Can ya not just help me learn my magicks?” Cameron asked. “Stop… y’know, killin’ my friends?”
The wolf jumped onto the cart and sat down beside me. “I suppose I can tone it down, but I will shape you into effective soldiers!”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Just lemme sleep…”
I barely finished the word “sleep” before I feel unconscious.
”Riley, c’mon. It’s time,” I said. She didn’t look like she was ready for what we had to do, and I honestly couldn’t blame her. I was barely ready for what was about to happen. But I couldn’t let her give up now. We were so close. We needed to see this through to the end.
“I know,” she said, “I’m just… Cres, you know what’s gonna happen.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the point. If we don’t…” I took her hand. “If we don’t do this, everything is at stake. We can’t let that happen.”
I saw tears streaming down her cheek. “I know. I really do, I get it, but I don’t… I don’t wanna lose you.”
I cupped her face in my hands. “You never will.”
I could tell that wasn’t exactly reassuring her. I wasn’t really reassured myself. We only had one shot at this and if we failed, there would be nothing left. Hell, the very idea of this terrified me. I couldn’t really comprehend what it was doing to Riley. The weight of this must have been destroying her.
But I was there for her. I was, while not really ready, certainly determined to see this through to the end. I took her hand once more, then leaned in and brought my lips to hers.
One final kiss.
It lasted minutes. It lasted for days, weeks, years, centuries. Time froze completely, all while we stood there making out like children. I wanted nothing more than to stay there, kissing her, for the rest of eternity. If only the world was just us…
She broke off the kiss and looked up into my eyes. "I guess if that's our last kiss, at least it was a perfect one."
I chuckled. "Don't think of it as the last, think of it as our first."
She clutched my hand tightly. "I will. Alright, Cres, let's get this started."
I looked down and saw a bright star of light on the floor growing all around me. I hadn't heard her whisper the spell at all, which meant she was getting better at her casting. Used to be I could hear her in the neighboring kingdoms. I laughed quietly. I was so glad I'd met her.
"I'll see you again soon, Riley," I said as I kissed her hand.
And then the light enveloped me…
I woke up with a headache and a great deal of confusion. What the hell had that been? And why was that girl there? More importantly, why did it seem like we were… well, involved. I didn’t even know her, why would I be kissing her? Where had that come from?
I didn’t have any answers, and neither did… the nothing I was asking them to. The carriage was moving again, so at some point we’d gotten back on the road. Sari was at the front, Cameron and the wolf were sleeping on each other (what the?) and the sky had turned pretty much completely black. Must have been somewhere around midnight. There was just one particular oddity, however.
“Where’s the moon?” I asked, my voice sounding like gravel run through a water wheel. I still felt like complete shit, but I was at least capable of moving on my own. I slid into the seat beside Sari.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said, some amusement in her voice. “What did you ask?”
“It’s night, but I don’t see any moon.”
“You haven’t really been in this part of Dorenden, have you?”
“No.”
“The Dark Night, it happens every year at this time.”
I coughed out a laugh. “Who came up with that name?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. I learned about it from some shaman near here.”
I looked around at where we were, which was pretty much just forest. “Where exactly is here?” I asked.
She smirked. “Congrats, Cres Siorcas, you’re about to visit the Imperial capital of Myzacile. Or, well, we’re on a road close to it, anyway.”
I blinked twice. The capital? I could have sworn it was on the eastern most edge of the Empire, not somewhere in the middle. “You sure?”
She nodded. “Positive. Jaide and I came here on a job once, and I recognize everything.”
“Everything, huh?”
“Okay, so I don’t technically recognize everything, but I can see where I’ve been.”
“How?”
“Back before I left the Plains Tribe, the witch gave me the instructions to make this powder,” she reached into her bag and pulled out a small bag of light green stuff. I’d caught sight of her pulling the bag out before, but I’d never considered asking her about it. “It’s used to track where I’ve been, and only I can see where I put it.”
That seemed… odd. “And you didn’t use it in that weird forest we were in a few days ago?”
She shook her head. “No, I did, but it evaporated immediately. That place was friggin’ screwy, okay?”
“So how long does it last?”
“Forever, so long as whatever trees I wipe it on don’t get cut down.”
I had to admit, I was impressed. “You gonna share that stuff so none of us get lost?”
She shook her head again. “There’s a reason only I can see it. The ingredients require something of me in order for the powder to even leave a mark.”
Something of her? “Whaddya do to make it work?”
She glared at me. “Personal, Cres!”
I sighed. “Fine, fine.”
She giggled. “I’m joking! I cut the tip off of a hair and grind it up with the rest of the stuff. I’ll teach you guys some time, just not now.”
I rolled my eyes. I guess if that was the best I was gonna get, it just was. I didn’t understand why she hadn’t brought this up weeks ago, but that was her choice. I had other things to focus on.
Myzacile. I’d read about it, many times. Back when I was a kid, and even after Circi and I were driven from our home by the white dragon, she’d have me keep up with my studies as much as possible for two people nomadically running around. Myzacile was the first city founded by the Empire after the Judgment of the Gods. It was said that the first Emperor was an immigrant from Qinata, hence the heavy Qinatan influence on some villages. Though I’d never been on an airship before, it was said that no matter where in the Empire you were, from an airship, you could always see Myzacile.
On the subject of airships, one passed overhead almost enough to land on us. The dodo were rustled a little, but they did their best to keep going straight. I’d only ever seen an airship once, from a distance. They were essentially large boats, given flight by combining electricity with magic, and propulsion by steam engines. How they stayed in the air was beyond me, but I assumed it had something to do with magic.
The airship pulled up over the treeline, then slowly began turning to the right. I assumed that was where Myzacile was, and that this airship was heading there. “We gonna follow them?” I asked Sari.
She chuckled. “Of course. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff we could steal in Myzacile.”
I glared at her. “Seriously?”
“What? Once a thief, always a thief. Even if I’m an honest one. Besides, where else are we supposed to get stuff? Do you see money on either of us?”
She wasn’t wrong. What we’d spent at that inn a few days back hadn’t been much, but after we got our stuff back from Trafus’s family, we hadn’t gotten our cash back. Presumably, Trafus took it as payment or something. I didn’t know or care, honestly. I guess stealing would havta do for now, after all.
“Alright, but we are not gonna get into deep shit and be chased out of here immediately, you understand me?”
She laughed again. “Yeah, like we’re not wanted, or anything.”
I sighed. Goddamn it, she was right about that…
The books I’d read said Myzacile was always visible from an airship. Once we cleared the forest and finally came into capital territory, I could understand exactly why it was always visible from an airship. The city itself was huge. Obnoxiously huge, in fact. If there weren’t seven or eight Peresten-sized cities packed into this place, I’d be amazed. I’d never seen something so large in my entire life, and I doubted I’d see something this large again.
The first thing you’d see when you came into the city was the bridge. It was a good seven miles long, and that was a conservative estimate. It seemed to take forever before we finally crossed it. The reason for the bridge was that the capital was, in reality, a floating castle in the middle of a large lake. I would never believe such a thing existed if I wasn’t looking at it. The bridge we crossed was only one of several, all leading to the nearest edge of the land surrounding the lake.
The second thing that was most obvious about the capital was the Imperial Palace. It was dead center of the city, rising a good five miles straight up. I’d never seen buildings that tall before, as even in most cities a building would never really go over two floors, three at the most. Inns were an exception, for obvious reasons, but the Palace dwarfed even some mountains nearby. Gold spires stood out from every corner of it, though I couldn’t entirely see what shape the Palace was from the carriage.
The city itself looked so very crowded, like everyone was packed into a sardine can. Airships didn’t quite fill the sky, but there were so many that I didn’t understand how I’d never seen them earlier. Most of them were landing on or near the Palace, presumably to ferrying dignitaries and such to meet with the Emperor.
After I finally peeled my eyes away from the magnificent sight, I turned to Sari and saw her grinning. Clearly she was amused by how in awe I was. For her, a thief destined to one day be a chieftain, this kind of thing probably wouldn’t be uncommon. She’d probably snuck into and out of this place dozens of times just to steal some fruit for people, and when she’d finally be High Chieftain, her days would be full of going to places like this.
But holy shit was I gonna be amazed at what I was seeing for at least the rest of the day.
We reached the end of the bridge, where a station was set up for inspecting incoming travelers. Beyond that just a bit was a large gate, which looked like it was made out of gold and wood, though I very much doubted that. It would likely be too heavy to open if it had gold built into it, unless they were using magic or a dragon to open it. Even trolls weren’t that strong.
A soldier stood there, wearing a black outfit with only the chestpiece and helmet of his armor over top of it. He looked outrageously bored, like his day had been slogging on for hours and he was this close to his shift being over.
“What’s your business in the capital?” he asked. His voice even sounded like he was trying to suppress a yawn.
Sari answered, “Visiting friends and family in the northwest borough.”
His eyes shifted from us in the front to Cameron and the wolf in the back. “And your pet?” He walked around to Artus and tried to pet him, but the wolf instead snapped at him. “Has he got his shots?”
Cameron smiled. “Oh, he’s up ta date ‘n all. Me da took him to the vet just the other day.”
The soldier looked like he wanted to press further, but instead realized that asking anymore questions would just take minutes away from his day. “Alright. You can lock your birds up at the pen just inside the gate. You’ll need to take city carriages to your destination, though you may just want to walk. Dogs aren’t exactly well-regarded by most of our carriage drivers.”
I smirked. “I think we’ll be fine.”
The soldier took a step back and waved us through. The massive gate ahead of us opened, allowing us passage into the city proper. I nearly gasped at the sight of the buildings I saw. Myzacile had a beautiful aesthetic, with every building looking in some way as it if were built with gold, silver or crystal. The buildings were tall to the point that even what appeared to be houses were taller than most of the inns that I’d seen.
And here I thought I’d seen everything.
Sari directed to birds over to the stable house to the right of the gate. It was already full of horses, and the stablemaster seemed quite confused about our dodo, but she just shrugged and found us a spot to park the carriage. I didn’t quite understand the confusion, however, because there was another set of birds in another stable, though these were yellow, a little rounder and a little taller than our dodo.
My stomach started to rumble. All this thought about birds made me hungry for chicken, but I put that out of my mind for the time being. I pulled my sword out of the carriage and clipped it to my belt just before a soldier walked up to me and grabbed it. He was dressed similarly to the one at the gate, but this one was clearly an elf.
“By order of the Emperor, only military personnel are allowed to carry weapons in the capital,” the soldier said, his voice carrying a bit of an accent.
“Are you serious?” Sari asked. Another soldier popped up from out of nowhere and grabbed her bow and her daggers. “Hey!”
The first one repeated, “By order of the Emperor, only military personnel--”
“Are allowed to carry weapons, yadda yadda, we heard you,” Sari finished for him.
“In the capital,” the soldier decided to have the last word. “You can retrieve your weapons when your business is concluded. You said you were visiting family in the northwest borough, there is a boat nearby to take you to the northeast borough, from there is a carriage to the northwest.”
The soldiers then turned and walked away from us, in complete lockstep, like they’d rehearsed this thing for years and couldn’t get it out of their heads. Hell, maybe they had. I just didn’t like the idea of my blade not being with me again. I thought I’d dealt with that long enough at Fork.
Luckily, I still had a dagger hidden in my belt. And I saw Sari slipping a sheathed knife into her bra. I inwardly laughed at that. Once a thief, always a thief, I guessed. Not that I was much better, though.
“Where we gunna go?” Cameron asked. I saw that at some point, she’d slipped a collar on Artus that I didn’t even know she’d been carrying. The idea of an animal created by magic being leashed up was amusing.
I turned to Sari. “Northwest borough? What’s over there?”
She smiled. “Exactly what we need for the rest of our trip.”
I sighed. Whatever the hell that meant.
“No ticket, no ride,” the boat rower said. He was a short, fat man with a bushy mustache and what sounded like a voice made of broken glass and concrete. “You want a ticket, you go to the travel office and buy a pass.”
Sari groaned. “I just told you, we don’t have any money and I do have a pass, it’s just at my parents’ house.” I had no idea who these ‘parents’ were she was talking about. “I can show it to you once we get there, but we can’t get there without you.”
The rower shook his head. “No ticket, no ride,” he repeated.
Sari looked like she wanted to scream. “I’ve done this before!” she actually did kinda shout. “How did you even get this job, from your mother?!”
He just plopped down in his seat and covered his face with a straw hat. “Whatever, I’m off duty anyway.”
Now, she screamed. “You’re an asshole!” She kicked the boat, probably intending to kick it hard enough to knock him off of it, but all she succeeded in doing was hurting her foot. “Ugh! Now we havta walk!”
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “C’mon, not exactly a big deal.”
“Uh, yeah it is. This place is huge!”
Cameron said, “It’ll be alright. There’s plenty uh places to rest, right?”
I smirked. “See, Cameron’s looking at the bright side.”
Artus piped in with, “You sorry sons of bitches want rest. You either go fifty miles without stopping or you give me two hundred push-ups with one hand!”
We all stared at him for a good minute before I just said, “Yeah, that’s not the plan.” I turned to Sari. “Where exactly in the northwest borough are we going and why?” I asked.
She sighed. “I wasn’t lying about having a travel pass, and we can use that to get places that we couldn’t just by walking there.” She pointed up at one of the airships floating above the city. “Like on one of those.”
“Why ya wanna git on one uh those?” Cameron asked.
“We get on an airship, we can go straight to Peresten.”
“We’re going to Endawa,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but if we go to Peresten, we can meet one of my old contacts and get some supplies.”
“Why can’t we do that here?”
“You said you didn’t want to steal stuff!”
“And this contact of yours is just gonna give some shit up?”
She shrugged. “After a fashion. He’s a snakekin, I know how to deal with them to get everything we could ever want.”
Cameron said, “That sounds kinda too much. We should just get stuff here.”
I nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
Sari sighed again. “Okay, that’s not the only reason I wanna go to the northwest borough.”
I smirked. “There we go. What’s the other reason?”
“Well, after Trafus told you guys I’m the High Chieftain, it got to me, y’know? I’ve always known I’d havta live up to that someday, but I hoped that it would be somewhere down the road, like I’d get rich from all the thievery before I’d ever havta do that.” She sat down on the edge of the boat launch. For some reason, I only just now gave thought to the fact that we were having this conversation right beside the rower, who could just be faking the nap he was taking. “You know the Empire and the Plains Tribe aren’t exactly on the best of terms, especially after the last war.”
I nodded. “I read about it in the papers, yeah.”
“Well, one thing you don’t know is that women from the Plains Tribe are often taken from their homes on the border’s edge and sold as sex slaves here in the capital.”
“Whuh?” Cameron asked, clearly shocked. I couldn’t blame her.
Sari nodded. “Yeah. And there’s always slaves on the airships, brought in to serve as a way to sway dignitaries from other countries outside this continent. I just… it’s a personal thing, I know, but if I’m gonna be High Chieftain some day, I wanted to start by freeing those slaves. I know we’re out to try and stop the white dragon, but the world at large is still gonna be there when we’re done with that, and we should try to make a difference that way, y’know?”
I sighed. It did seem like it was outside our goals, but the idea that she was actually trying to help people rather than steal from them was actually kind of shocking. She wanted to do this, but I couldn’t be the only one to make that decision.
“Cameron,” I said, turning to the girl, “what do you think?”
She looked like she didn’t want to make the decision, either. “I dunno. It’s… it sounds like it’s too big for us alone. How are we gonna free all the slaves on all those airships?”
Artus shifted into his humanoid form for some reason. He looked ridiculous with the collar still on and Cameron still holding his leash. “Rescuing prisoners is a heavy duty that every soldier needs to consider strongly, but it’s always the right decision to make. This operation needs to be thought out, planned to the tiniest detail and every soldier needs to carry out their mission to the bitter end.”
I blinked twice. “Did you… did you just say a sentence without shouting?”
He stuck his face right in mine. “Savor the moment, maggot!”
Well, that ended quickly. I just chuckled. “Alright. Sari, you wanna live up to your birthright as High Chieftain?” I asked.
Her eyes lit up. “You mean it? You’re gonna help me do this? Even though it’s completely side-tracking our quest to kill the white dragon?”
I shook my head. “This isn’t a side-track at all. We need more allies if we’re gonna kill that monster, and what better way to do that than to unite all the Tribes under their High Chieftain? And saving her people will only get her there much faster.”
She jumped up and wrapped her arms around me in a hug I was pretty sure I’d never seen her do this entire time. Okay, maybe when she hugged Kalena. “Thank you!” she said through tears. I only knew she was crying when the tears hit my shirt. She broke off hugging me and hugged Cameron and Artus in turn. “Thank all of you.”
Cameron said, “We wouldn’t make ya leave or anythin’ like tha. Of course we’d help ya.”
Artus shifted back into wolf form. “I go wherever my mage goes.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “We started this together, we’re going wherever it takes us together.”
She smiled. “That would be sweet if I thought of you as more than my brother.”
I smirked. “Hey, brothers can help their sisters do important things, too.”
She whispered, “I know,” in such a tone that it sounded like she wanted to say more, but stopped herself.
