Blood on the Taiga: The Earthen Calamities: Nizhny Book 1

Chapter 1

Even in his near catatonic state, Gunnar recognized this wasn’t the normal amount of light sneaking into his solitary hole. His torpor-infused brain took a few beats to shift from bleary instinct to half awake.

Dark hole. Underground walls. The reinforced and enchanted steel door, with a slot for rolling in his weekly sustain potion, was the only light he’d seen in . . . Damn, he really had no idea how long.

Ah. Right.

He was deep in the bowels of the Manhattan Penitentiary, subsect of the Eastern Seaboard Conjunct Accorded Territory. Otherwise known as the only magical prison on Earth with a zero escape rate.

Metal squealed, the door hinges rusted from disuse. Hells. His hypernatural senses pained at the shrill sound, and Gunnar squeezed his eyes shut tighter at the widening light beam. What might have once been a growl crossed his cracked lips in a pathetic puff.

“Add the second and third restraints once he’s detached from the wall and floor anchors.”

The voice boomed in the confined space, Gunnar’s head throbbing with each syllable. At least the scents didn’t overwhelm him as well; he was so ripe with his own sweat and the piss and shit wafting up from the latrine, nothing else made it through.

Rough hands came at him from all sides, and it burned his ass that he flinched at the touch, his skin tingling as his heart barely pumped. His adrenaline wasn’t up to the task yet, his blood circulating like molasses. He didn’t resist. No point. He was in no state to fight or kill, nowhere near capable of battling his way free. He’d been rotting down here, forgotten, for too damn long.

Half carried, half dragged, he focused on surfacing from his torpor without letting on to the guards. Whoever moved him must have been big, lifting him with no effort. Trolls, ogres, or half-giants maybe? Working the prisons was one way their kind avoided becoming residents. Whoever led his retrieval was a duster like himself or an Aperien. No human in their right mind came anywhere near a place like this.

Every sound grated against his oversensitive ears. They reached an elevator, rode it for a bit while he kept his eyes pinched tight. His eyes still hurt, and the influx of light got worse once they left the elevator. Tile clicked under heels now. They’d come out above the cell blocks and into processing.

The ground floor, which connected to the outside world.

Gunnar itched despite himself. What the hells was going on? There was no reason to drag his ass out. His kind didn’t deserve freedom, a message made abundantly clear his entire life.

Doors, buzzers. Muttered complaints and exclamations of surprise from those they passed. Another door open, shut, and his ass was pushed into a metal chair. Wrist restraints shackled to the table in front of him, ankles bound to the floor. Collar clipped in place, anchored at the chest cross guard, the hum of magical reinforcement. Experienced enchanters liked to add sensory charms, calling cards showing just how good they were at their job.

“Wait outside.”

He knew the voice, but he couldn’t quite place it in his haze.

It wasn’t a big room, he could tell by the acoustics, maybe five feet of space around him in all directions and a low ceiling. Gunnar shifted in the chair, testing. Not much give, but nice having a seat for once. Be nicer if they’d turn down the damn lights; his growing migraine made it hard to concentrate.

A sizzle of radio static. “Send them in.”

The doors opened and closed again; he counted at least four different locking mechanisms, not accounting for spell or rune work. Two additional sets of footsteps.

“Archivist Avialian, Assistant Doe,” his keeper greeted, tone clipped.

“Warden Kushiel,” a smooth male voice returned. “And she is Esquire Doe now.”

“Warden,” followed a firm but quiet voice, feminine.

“Ah, yes. Esquire.”

Warden Kushiel sounded as pompous as the first time they’d met, right before he’d thrown Gunnar down a hole. Not that Gunnar expected anything less from the Ridged One. The angel oversaw punishments on Earth now instead of the particular Hell from his origin mythos.

“How remiss of me,” the warden went on, “not to assume a promotion was in the cards given your enthusiastic efforts in overhauling the Vilestars Accord.”

“She was instrumental,” the archivist replied, airy and casual, almost sounding amused.

“She,” the woman said, her voice soft despite the steel lacing it, “is standing right here.”

Small feet crossed the room toward Warden Kushiel. Gunnar wondered how far she had to crane her neck to look the angel in the face. Unless she was some kind of air element, she must’ve been tiny given those featherweight footfalls.

Gunnar inhaled, but he still couldn’t parse anything beyond his own stench. Just breathing made his face ache, the room arid compared to his dank, solitary cell.

“His condition violates the most basic standards for prisoner care,” the woman went on, her voice pitching higher. “How can you condone this?”

“Because I was there,” the warden all but snarled, the room warming with his temper. “I fought on the front line to end Lamashtu and Lucifer’s very effective campaign to exterminate humanity. I bled to bring their Calamity to heel. I watched millions die, friends and kin among them, and I put two of their heinous offspring to the sword myself.”

“Your honorable service in a war that happened nearly a century ago doesn’t excuse your behavior toward a man who had nothing to do with it,” Esquire Doe returned.

“He is a vileblood. I am—I was well within my rights under the Accords,” Kushiel answered, his tone back to crisp and controlled.

“An Accord that is since altered,” the archivist said. “And adjustments must follow. No one is here to downplay the importance of your role in ending the Vilestar War or your service since.”

“Having vileblood doesn’t give a blank slate for abusing them, not even within the bounds of the previous version of the Accord,” Esquire Doe insisted. “When you look at this man, do you truly see justice?”

“I see a man who, blood aside, is an unrepentant, violent murderer,” Kushiel replied, papers shuffling. “One John Dust 78102, captured—legally—for his Accord-sanctioned life imprisonment at age five. After being placed in an approved juvenile facility, he killed seventeen of his fellow inmates before escaping at age ten.”

Sounded about right. His early years were a bit of a blur.

A page turned. “Recaptured at age fourteen for crimes including theft, illegal solicitation, and multiple murders of licensed retrieval agents.”

All true.

Another page. “Two years in the Madagascar Penitentiary, another ten inmate deaths and three guards killed before escaping again. More crimes, more killings.”

He grinned, wondering just how thick his file was.

“Captures, escapes, a knack for killing his fellow inmates with alarming efficiency.” Pages turned faster now. “Rinse and repeat for another dozen years before he landed on my doorstep ten years ago after raping and nearly killing a child.”

He shifted against the restraints, muscles twitching. That last bit was a lie.

“Those last charges are false,” Esquire Doe countered. Gunnar wondered how she knew. “And none of that changes the fact that he is a sentient being with basic rights.”

“Which shall be properly observed in the future,” the archivist said. It wasn’t quite an order but carried weight, laden in the way the air shifted.

“None of which explains why you are here,” the warden said. “Am I to haul all the dangerous beings in this facility up for your evaluation, Archivist Avialian?”

“You mistake the situation, Warden. I am the assistant in this scenario. Esquire, if you would?”

She straightened herself with a rustle of cheap fabric, very unlike the archivist’s expensive silk robes or the warden’s starch-crisp uniform. “I’m here to secure his release.”

Gunnar blinked, wincing at the stab of light.

What the actual fuck?

The room remained deadly silent for a beat.

When the warden spoke again, his tone had shifted. Overly gentle. Curious.

Cautious.

“You have a promising future as an esquire, after helping appeal such significant legislation. The controversy surrounding it aside. Why would you risk your new found status on this . . . creature? Even with the adjustments to the Vilestars Accord, John Dust 78102 is a documented killer. That makes him ineligible for the new parole conditions.”

“That’s true,” the woman agreed. “Which is why I’m going to prove he became a killer because of his forced imprisonment under the Accord’s original version.”