Chapter 4 #2
The gruff guard didn’t repeat his warning to Kaito or Ren, and their entire group was silent as they filed into a narrow corridor with panelled walls on either side, the occasional opening in the wall where she traced her cane indicating a doorway into a train compartment.
They claimed one of the compartments and fell onto the bench seats.
Eiko listened to a rattling door slide closed.
For a moment, nobody said a word, and then, strangely, horribly, she began to laugh.
It was a tickle in her throat that escaped when she heard a similar sound spill from Rion, and then they were all laughing.
It took a long time for the wall of sound to die off, likely because they were scared of the reality that might rush in as soon as they stopped.
“I’m sorry,” Eiko said, reaching out to the two friends on either side of her, linking her hands with Rion’s and Ky’s.
“We’re sorry too,” Ren added.
“Clearly.” There was a chuckle still in Rion’s voice, but it was strained. “You didn’t have to end your lives over it.”
Kaito grunted unhappily. “You would have done the same thing. We’re a team. We’re family. Always have been. This is just … a … a new adventure.”
Calling their possible imminent death a “new adventure” had them all keeling over with laughter again, and this time, there was a hint of hysteria to the sound.
“Your families,” Eiko said, once they had calmed down again. She dried her eyes with the sleeve of her coat.
“We’ll just have to survive.” There was a shrug in Rion’s intonation. “And come back as members of the Godsguard.”
Kaito scoffed out an incredulous sound. “The Godsguard have one job: to protect us from the Quiet, and the monsters who inhabit it. If we—by some miracle—walk out of Blackreach, if we survive a Silencing—to a monster—that’s just the start.
The survival rate during the first month of a Silencing is 50 per cent—”
“You just made that up,” Eiko interrupted.
“Well, it’s probably 50 per cent.”
“Probably lower,” Ren agreed with Kaito. “More like 20.”
“Quit making up statistics,” Ky jumped in. “That’s highly classified information. The Godsguard would never publish their survival rates … but it’s more like 10 per cent.”
“We’re going to die,” Kira whispered, making Eiko jump. She had forgotten about Kira.
“For the love of light,” Ky also jolted beside Eiko, “I forgot you were here.”
“Don’t mind him,” Rion said, a soft patting sound following the words. “He’s traumatised.”
“Anyway,” Kaito continued, “even if you survive all of that, you still have to do the actual Godsguard training. Some people say it’s harder than surviving Blackreach—”
“Seriously, who says that?” Eiko cut in again. “Where are all these Goldmoor spies you’re talking to?”
“Dark be damned, sister, will you let me finish my sentence?”
Eiko sighed. “Go ahead.”
“If you survive Blackreach, and then survive your monster, and then survive training and earn your uniform, you’d better hope we never come back here.
If we do, it’ll be because there’s a psychopathic shadow monster on the loose and we’ve been dispatched to quietly deal with it before anyone even realises. ”
“I’m sure they get time off.” Rion’s hand briefly detangled from Eiko’s to wave Kaito’s statement away. “The Godsguard are the heroes of Lyra. They could have anything they wanted.”
“I’ve heard some people train to board the Kingsweep … like … deliberately,” Ky added hesitantly, as though unsure if he should join Rion’s overly optimistic view of their situation just yet.
“Because the Kingsguard isn’t good enough?” Kira joked hesitantly, attempting to meet them on their level of delusional acceptance.
But nobody answered the question. There was simply no denying that the Godsguard were the most revered soldiers in Lyra.
Sun above, they were the most revered people, not just soldiers—other than the royal family, of course.
They were the closest thing Lyra had to living gods.
They were the king’s favoured. Blessed by the dark and the light both.
Beings of both worlds who wielded the power of the Quiet. Forged in fire, and all that.
“That man …” Kira spoke up again. “The one guarding the door. Is he one of the Godsguard?”
Ren laughed. “The old man with the walking cane—” Eiko aimed her own cane towards his voice and jabbed. Hard. He cleared his throat. “Ah, yeah, likely not. Don’t the Godsguard wear gold?”
“He was wearing black,” Rion muttered to Eiko. “Like all black.”
“And he didn’t have the finger tattoos,” Ren added.
“I heard about that,” Kaito said. “They get these markings—and they’re not tattoos, by the way—that show what kind of monster they Silenced, and the thickness of the markings shows how strong their bond is.”
“You heard? From your mysterious Goldmoor informant?” Eiko asked with an eyeroll, though she had actually heard the same rumour.
Kaito reached over the space between them to swat at her knee, but it was more of a gentle, reassuring touch, betraying their unspoken charade that they were just a group of friends taking a casual train journey together and indulging in nonchalant Goldmoor gossip.
“He was wearing gloves,” Rion said. “That’s why you didn’t see any finger markings.”
“Maybe he was wearing them because he has a really weak bond, and he doesn’t want people to know?” Kira almost whispered the words, afraid the guard might hear them.
Eiko huddled into Ky’s side as he stretched his arm behind her, sinking into her own thoughts as the others continued to gossip and speculate.
They were just trying to distract themselves, but she no longer had the energy to participate.
The shock was beginning to wear off, and she was slowly facing the reality of what had happened.
Lord Erendi had escalated—seemingly overnight—and was using his purity guard to experiment on people who challenged his agenda. He had realised that he couldn’t change the minds and hearts of people who didn’t agree with him, so he would hollow them of thoughts and feelings instead.
Rion had never indicated that she was interested in women—or men, for that matter.
She simply had never indicated interest at all.
Perhaps her lack of investment in men was what had brought speculation and landed her name on the list. After all, what use was a woman if she didn’t intend to marry a man and produce offspring to work in the mountains and serve their society?
Ky’s name being on the list made a little more sense, but it was also harder to swallow.
Presumably, Lord Erendi had curated the list—or at least approved it in some way.
That meant Ky’s own father would rather reduce Ky to a hollowed-out, listless, sore-covered husk than allow him to simply exist as he was.
“How are you feeling?” Eiko whispered to Rion, realising her friend had gone silent on her other side.
“Fine,” Rion muttered back, laying her head on Eiko’s shoulder and cuddling closer. The temperature was dropping now that the adrenaline was fading away. “I don’t think the hollow seed had a chance to affect us.”
Gradually, their little compartment drifted into silence. Eiko couldn’t feel the subtle warmth from their glitterstones, which meant there was a light source on the train. She had assumed it would be dark, for some reason.
“Stonesigh is the first stop for the Kingsfete.” Kaito eventually broke the lull, dropping their forced casualness and wielding a more serious inflection. “It’ll take us a while to get back to the capital. We still have to stop at the keep or stronghold of every major region in Lyra before then.”
Nobody answered him. They were all mentally calculating how long it would take to get to Stormridge, and then to Frostwail, before the train looped around and travelled back on the inland track, passing through Windspire, Stillwater, Ironglade, Oakensnare, and Suntide.
It would take weeks.
They had weeks to come up with a plan. To come to terms with what they had chosen. To figure out a way to stay alive.
To mourn the life they had left behind without even a second thought.
It seemed like an eternity, and not nearly enough time.
As the train vibrated to life the next morning, they stirred sluggishly from their sleeping piles strewn over the bench seats and the floor. It wasn’t until then that the cold dread of reality set in.
“I can’t do this.” It was Kira. She was scrambling for the door. “I’d rather face the purity guard.”
“Sit down,” Ren grumbled. “Ow! You just stepped on—”
“Kira, you can’t,” Rion begged, as Eiko edged away from the scuffle breaking out. “As soon as you boarded, you entered into a contract with the Kingsweep. With the crown. You’ll be arrested as soon as you step off the train.”
Kira must have stopped trying to escape because a few seconds later, there was a heavy thump against the bench seat, and then the loud sound of sobbing filled their compartment.
Kira didn’t stop crying.
Not when the train rolled away, smuggling them out of Stonesigh without the knowledge of their neighbours, families, and friends.
Not when an attendant dropped off a meagre offering of bread and dried meat for them to share amongst the six of them.
Not when Ren and Kaito sneaked out to report that all the other compartments were empty, that the guard in black had disappeared, that there was a latrine at the end of the hall, and that there was no way to access any of the other train carriages from inside the Kingsweep.
Kira was still crying, on and off, as they climbed the cliffs of Stormridge and set up camp for the second stop of the Kingsfete.
Eiko was beginning to worry that the other woman would dehydrate herself, especially since they had only been given one canteen of water to share with their meal.
“He’s back,” Ren whispered, sounding like he had his face pressed up against the compartment door—likely peering through a gap. “The guard in black.”
“What’s he doing?” Eiko also lowered her tone to a whisper, and the others became subdued.
“Just standing in front of the door,” Ren answered. “I think he’s waiting for someone to ring the bell.”
Sure enough, close to an hour later, the sound of a ringing bell echoed faintly through the carriage, and they all pressed closer, trying to listen in.
“Two men,” Ren narrated. “Can’t hear what they’re saying.”
Later, there were three more men.
In Frostwail, it was even more men, and also two women.
In Windspire, one of the men tried to run away. The guard in black somehow dragged him back, despite Ren saying the runaway was a “scary-looking motherfucker.” That scary motherfucker refused to interact with anyone after that, choosing to hide in his compartment like a cowed little mouse.
During most of their stay in Stillwater, they decided that the guard in black must be on the Godsguard, and they debated what kind of monster he must have to allow him to terrify and subdue people so easily.
When they got to Oakensnare, the guard finally spoke loud enough for them to hear with their compartment door propped open slightly. He seemed to be attempting to refuse someone entry, but the person outside the train was shouting boisterously that he had just as much right to board as anyone else.
“The guard looks pissed,” Ren said. “I think this is the first emotion I’ve ever seen on his face.”
“Hey—” A minute later, Ky pulled open their door, trying to catch someone’s attention. “What was all that about?”
“Just Cairn being Cairn,” a smooth male voice returned. It wasn’t the bored voice of the attendant who brought them basic fare and water once a day, and it certainly wasn’t the gruff voice of the guard.
“Cairn?” Ky asked. “That’s the guard’s name? You know him?”
“Know him?” the smooth voice rumbled off into a laugh. “He’s from here, isn’t he?”
“From Oakensnare? How would I know?” Ky sounded confused.
“You don’t know Cairn Torven?” This time, the laugh was loud, and Eiko wondered if the guard was near enough to hear them.
“He wouldn’t know,” a second male voice inserted. “Look at his skin, his eyes—he’s from that blasted mountainhold. They never know anything about the rest of the world. I don’t even think they get the news pamphlets from Goldmoor.”
News pamphlets? She knew Kaito didn’t have any mysterious Goldmoor friends.
“Who is he?” Ky lowered his voice substantially. “Cairn?”
“The butcher of Oakensnare.” That smooth male voice had turned solemn, a hint of grief that he cleared his throat to bury.
“He’s the commander of the Godsguard’s first soldier—more important than all his captains and section leaders.
Thought he was just some old cripple, didn’t you?
” Both unfamiliar men laughed—a third and a woman joined in.
“Well … he could kill you with that cane without even looking.”
Ky didn’t reply for a second, and then he suddenly blurted, “You’re one of those people who train for Blackreach and then join the Kingsweep on purpose, aren’t you?”
“Only way to get into the Godsguard.” This time, it sounded like the stranger was smirking. “They like to weed out the weaklings this way. Was it the armour that gave us up? Nothing beats Oakensnare armour.”
“What use is armour against the Quiet?” Kaito sounded as though he had pushed open the compartment door wider to squeeze into the opening beside Ky.
“I guess you’re about to find out,” the man replied, before ushering his group along to find their own room.