Chapter 51

A sizzling ember fell onto Kestrel’s arm. He could barely feel the burning on his skin so dry and blistered he’d become. He didn’t even bother to knock it off himself. He wasn’t sure he would be able to if he wanted. His hands had frozen to the water-pump. His body, well past exhausted, moved mechanically.

Pump, spray. Pump, spray. Pump.

How many fires had they put out? Kestrel had long since lost count. The fire felt alive to him. It was a malevolent force that lived only to consume and destroy. Their company would put out one fire, and another one would spring up in its place. Kestrel had long since passed the point where he felt fear, the point where he felt hope.

He didn’t feel anything now.

He just moved as if walking through a waking dream. Though it was every few minutes he’d stop to take a sip of water and wet his clothes and linen mask, it felt like eons passed between each break. Every time it became harder to break his grasp of the pump, to move.

How much longer could they keep going on?

They had to have put a dent in the fires that ravaged the heart of Fiell. Right?

Kestrel couldn’t tell and nobody dared to ask. They all knew that if they realized just how much more the flames had taken, they would all give up right there on the spot. No, they would rather not know.

They didn’t want to give into despair.

They couldn’t allow themselves to stop.

Pump, spray. Pump, spray. Pump, spray. Pump.

The fires raged on. The sounds of screaming families and hacking coughs were the constant companions of the brigade. Kestrel had already seen too much horror from the fire. He’d seen the bubbling skin and smell the acrid smoke that emanated from the cooked bodies of drunks too inebriated to escape from the all consuming blaze. He’d seen children’s bodies, collapsed on the ground, smoke stealing the air from their lungs, dead.

He could use those memories. He would take them and add them to the gruesome gallery that protected his memories from the touch of other Takers just like him. He knew that Wallace would be instructing him to take the memories he was making of this horror and add them to his defensive walls.

Wallace.

Where had the old man gone? He’d marched down to the riverfront with the older soldier and he remembered working side by side with the old man, but he’d lost track of him somewhere along the way.

What had happened to Wallace? Kestrel’s stomach churned. Had the fires consumed his mentor like they had the desiccated bodies of the drunks he’d seen? The possibility sickened him. What would he do if he lost the old man? Wallace had taken him in and nursed him back to health. He’d been more than a healer to Kestrel. He had become both a mentor and the closest thing that Kestrel had ever had to family. The closest thing to a father figure.

Kestrel was surprised to find that the though of losing the gruff old bear terrified him so much that tears were threatening to fall at the thought.

What would he do if he lost Wallace? Lost Aris or Sephira? Or even Aris’ wife and their twins? He knew little of the trio, but still, they’d become the closest thing he could call to family since he had thought he’d lost Cillia to the hands of corrupt city guards.

He would stop this fire. He would stop it so he could save the city that Sephira, Wallace, Aris and his family called home. He had little love lost for the streets, they were a constant reminder of the pain that surrounded him as a child, but he did love those who’d given their all to protect this city, and he would be a failure of a man if he didn’t give his all to protect them too.

Where is that old man? Kestrel thought again, and, as if in response to his thoughts, he and Aris broke through the smoke. Kestrel noticed that the mount that Aris had departed on was no longer with him. What had happened?

The bruises he saw on Aris put his senses on high alert. Blood still caked his lips and chin but Kestrel couldn’t see the swelling or bent cartilage that often indicated a broken nose.

What could have caused the General to bleed like that without having been struck? Kestrel only knew of one thing with that power and the implications of it terrified him.

Still he knew it had to be true.

Inquisitors were somehow tied to the fires, and that meant that Emperor Evrain himself had a hand in what was unfolding before him. He’d been the one to stoke the fires that they were finally beating back after what seemed like an eternity of fruitless efforts.

Had Aris and the grizzly old Wallace had something to do with turning that tide?

Most likely.

Seconds later Wallace confirmed his suspicions. He and General Ravenscroft strode up to him and without any preamble told him, “the arsons who’re causing these fires are Memory Mages. Forgotten and Inquisitors are working in pairs. We already killed three pairs of them. We ambushed the first but didn’t realize there was another pair close by and they attacked us. That’s where I got this,” Aris point to the crusted blood under his nose. “Those Inquisitors are just as terrifying in real life as they are in the memories I’ve spied.”

Kestrel nodded. He should feel shocked at the news, but he’d expected as much. Aris’ company had gone to fight the fires knowing full well that they were caused by arsons, and they had been ordered to kill any on sight any arsons caught in the act.

Aris’ revelation had merely confirmed his intuition.

Emperor Evrain was behind the fires, and for some nebulous reason, he seemed to want to purge the streets.

Was he trying to cleanse Fiell as he’d ‘cleansed’ Portin and Brinhold? Everything in Kestrel prayed that wasn’t true, but he couldn’t fight what he was seeing. Whatever had befallen the twin cities was being replicated in his home of Fiell.

What could possibly drive the Emperor to fuel such destruction? Only a demon would decimate the livehoods and living spaces of so many.of his subjects. One truly had to have no heart to do what Evrain had done.

“Follow us,” Wallace commanded, helping Kestrel to pry his hand from the pump, to replace it with a metalvine. “With how the fires were spreading, we expect there to be at least four more teams wreaking havoc. We’ll find them and we’ll kill them. Do you understand me?”

Kestrel gulped and nodded. He didn’t shy away from death. It was an every day occurrence to him during his formative years.

No, what scared him was the idea of taking another’s life. He had yet to put someone down. Even the suicidal Inquisitor whom, after Kestrel had retrieved his memories, had used his own hands to end his life. Kestrel may have been the impetus, but he hadn’t been the tool. He hadn’t driving the knife in with his own hands.

That was about to change.

*****

Kestrel launched himself backwards. He thanked the High God that Wallace had insisted that they wrap as much of their exposed skin as they could. He felt like a fresh baked meat pie in the middle of summer, but he’d rather overheat than to lose himself at the touch of a Forgotten.

The idea of not knowing who he was, nor remembering the faces of those he had once loved horrified Kestrel.

Visions of fingernails being ripped off and the sharp edges jammed back into the raw and bloody stumps where they’d once been danced through Kestrel’s mind.

The memory made Kestrel nauseous but he wouldn’t let that stop him.

He had trained for this.

As Kestrel danced away from the ever-grasping Forgotten he allowed himself to come closer and closer to the Inquisitor. Each evasion brought him closer to the guard of the Inquisitor.

There. He found the opportunity he’d been looking for.

He evaded another blow from the Forgotten and sent him reeling backwards with a heavy kick. As he did so, the Inquisitor rushed in from his side in an attempt to tackle him. Kestrel, who’d been expecting the attack, was ready and he turned at the last second and grasped the man’s shirt, rolling into a throw that sent the man slamming into the ground with rib cracking force. He rolled  to regain his footing and twisted to throw a heavy kick to the man’s jaw, breaking it.

As soon as he’d done so, a wave of pain assaulted him. It felt as if he’d shattered his own face.

He ignored the pain and dodged the small knife that the Inquisitor had launched at him.

He smiled. He’d found the hidden cloak pocket that held the assassin’s blades.

Kestrel dove past the man’s guard and slammed his elbow into the Inquisitor’s face twice, giving him enough time to grab a hidden blade and plunge it into the man’s chest.

Kestrel twisted away, leaving the knife sticking from the gasping Inquisitor’s chest as he felt the hand of the Forgotten reach at his linen covered arms. All it would take for him to lose his memory, and just as likely, his life, was just one touch from the Emperor’s Forgotten. That couldn’t happen.

Kestrel’s aim had been true and the Inquisitor’s breath rattled in his lungs and the taste of copper filled his throat but still he fought and even as the hooded arson breathed his last he sent visions of watery lungs drowning in their own blood into Kestrel’s mind.

The sudden silence in his mind was almost more shocking to Kestrel than the life that he took from the scar riddled Imperial Assassin.

It was odd. He thought he would feel more having took his first life, but he didn’t. It just felt like silence.

The tenacious Forgotten didn’t allow him any time to dwell on the thought though as Kestrel desperately scrambled away from his poisonous touch. The Forgotten shifted as Kestrel dodged and grasped onto Kestrel’s cloth-covered arm. He yanked, tearing the linen wrapping and exposing the naked reddened skin beneath.

“Hell,” Kestrel muttered, fear erupting at the possibility of facing the Memory Mage’s touch on his bare skin.

He needed to deal with the man. The Forgotten needed to pay for what he’d done. He had already seen too many burning corpses this short night. So many had died by this monster’s hands.

To save lives Kestrel needed to take this man’s life.

He just had to find the right opportunity.

The shuffling step that the Forgotten took provided Kestrel with that opportunity. Kestrel knew it indicated an oncoming takedown attempt and he planted his feet. He could finish the weaponized Mage.

He stood his ground. He was going to stop this monster.

The Forgotten, seeing that Kestrel wasn’t going to dodge in time, lowered his head to drive into Kestrel and scoop his legs from under him.

He was going take everything from this blasted guard. He’d already put up far too much of a fight. He had to be a Memory Mage, and any Mage that fought against the Emperor was a monster. They were bastards that sought to bring them back into the Hell that Evrain had rescued them from.

They deserved to die.

The Forgotten’s head slammed into Kestrel’s side. He snaked his arms to cup Kestrel’s legs, but Kestrel knew what was coming. He’d invited the arson in and he threw his feet backwards the moment he felt the his touch.

Using the energy from the sprawl, Kestrel crashed the point of his elbow into the man’s occipital bone. The force of the impact slammed the Forgotten’s face into the hard ground. His nose splattered on the ground with a wet pop.

Still he made to get up.

Kestrel couldn’t allow that. He jammed his foot onto the back of the arson’s head, sending his face crashing into the ground once again, but this time the movement knocked his opponent out.

Kestrel, sparring no time, retrieved the dagger still protruding from the dead Inquisitor’s chest, and with a grimace of distaste and discomfort, drove it into the unconscious Forgotten’s neck.

No more live would be lost on account of this monster.