Chapter 1 Kasira #2
The sun hung low on the horizon by the time the last of the bodies had been dragged to the pile.
They returned to camp, where the air buzzed with preparations for the Paratal’s arrival the following morning.
Tents had been straightened, fighting leathers cleaned, vylor blades polished until they sang.
The patrols along the Isherwood had been doubled, straining their already-thin battalion.
But as head of the Haidrin Church, the Paratal’s life was second in importance only to the King’s, and no expense would be spared for his protection.
“Revna, my love, where have you been?” Paskar’s smoky voice barely preceded his long brown arm draping across Revna’s shoulders. He pulled away quickly with a sound of disgust. “What is that stench?”
“I believe they call it ‘defeat.’” Revna brushed a stray white feather free of her stained leathers. “It matches my new look.”
Paskar made a considering sound. “In truth, I would call it an improvement.”
Revna quipped something back at him, and they descended into a series of insults and elbows in ribs.
Before long, Revna had Paskar in a headlock and was forcing him to recant every word he’d said.
By the time they extricated themselves from each other, their group had reached the central square, where soldiers had gathered to eat around a roaring bonfire.
Kasira wanted nothing more than to wash the gore from beneath her nails and polish her sword in the silence of her tent, but their task had taken them past the start of dinner, and if she didn’t get hers now, none would remain.
They joined the mess line, Revna recounting her kills for Paskar, who was of the second unit and therefore didn’t fight.
Consisting mostly of medics, scribes, and cartographers, the second unit spent the majority of its time tending to the camp’s more skilled needs, and Paskar was their best medic.
The cook slopped a stew of barley and roughly cut root vegetables onto Kasira’s plate, half the portion he’d given the others. The man met her gaze, daring her to say something, but she only picked up a mug of thin ale and moved along.
“Are you joining us tonight, Kas?” Paskar asked once they were clear of the line.
He had the sort of face that folded easily into a smile, one she had no doubt usually got him his way.
It was the kind of smile she would have tried and adopted for herself once, before filing it away with all the others until she had need of it.
Revna hooked their arms together and said, “Of course she is.”
Kasira didn’t bother telling her this was a bad idea—she already knew.
The people around the bonfire were first unit soldiers, their heads bent in prayer over their food.
Revna was Unit One, a Malik proper, but Kasira was technically Unit Three, or the Kott, as the others called them in the northern Kalish tongue.
The Nothing, for that was all criminals were in the eyes of the goddess.
Most people in Unit Three were closely watched and relegated to tasks they couldn’t ruin—little more than servants—but Kasira had proven herself a useful enough soldier to be loaned to the thin first unit, though the others never wasted an opportunity to remind her she wasn’t one of them.
When Revna shouldered Jevin and another Malik aside to make room for them on the logs, they obliged, but grudgingly.
Jevin gave Kasira a look so foul it could have turned milk, clasping at the rosary beads around his wrist as if they might protect him from her corruption.
Revna’s smile dared him to say something, but he only turned away.
As much as Kasira had tried to keep to herself after joining the Malikinar, Revna had sought her out like an invasive vine, ensnaring her into friendship.
And though Kasira would never admit it, their connection kept her afloat.
Against every better judgement, she had still sought herself an anchor.
A touchpoint around which to build her lie, just like Loraya had taught her.
Except this time, she had no mark, no plan, no con. This time, the trick was to survive.
Just as they sat down, the ground jarred, sending a shudder through the camp. Trees groaned and quivered, several poorly set tents collapsing inward. Kasira braced herself, but the quake subsided as quickly as it came.
Paskar flicked spilled ale from his fingers. “Those are getting more frequent.”
“It’s the goddess showing her displeasure,” seethed Jevin in a low voice. “For the beast that … got away.”
Kasira’s fingers tightened around her cup.
People like Jevin couldn’t trip in Kalthos without blaming beasts.
Perhaps that was the trick of it, though.
The con. They needed to hold something accountable for their suffering, and the Haidrin Church had provided the perfect scapegoat.
And when the crown embraced the goddess a hundred years ago, the people went from blaming their leaders for every misfortune to killing beasts, all too willing to swallow whatever they were fed to numb the pain.
Or perhaps it’s all true, Kasira thought, studying a gnarled scar along her palm.
Perhaps her childhood wonder for beasts, her curiosity, had corrupted her.
One touch, and the sin had slid beneath her skin, the evil festering in her heart.
That was what the priests had told her when they tried to burn the sin from her flesh.
That if she did not repent, her soul would be left in the cold and silence of purgatory upon Haidra’s return, condemned forever to darkness.
It was the remnants of that curiosity that had stayed her hand against the Alkatir cub, a mistake she was certain she hadn’t yet finished paying for.
Paskar glanced nervously between Jevin and Revna, who looked one wrong word away from skewering Jevin with her fork. She was as devout a believer as any Kal, but twice as fierce a friend and far more than Kasira deserved.
Clearly seeking to change the topic, Paskar blurted, “Did you hear the Librarian has finally called for a new Assistant?” His long legs were stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his body tilted so his shoulder tipped into Revna’s. “I had started to doubt he would ever do it.”
For an instant, the tension between Jevin and Revna remained—and then her friend sniffed and tore into a hunk of bread, speaking over it. “I pity the damned fool who’s chosen.”
“I don’t know,” Paskar said with a wicked grin. “I’ve heard the current Librarian is something of a fox.”
“An attractive devil is still a devil, Paskar,” Revna returned. “And the Librarian is the worst kind. Right, Kas?”
“Yes,” she said automatically, as she had long ago learned to.
To say anything else was blasphemy. As the arbitrator of international politics across the six nations and the sole overseer for the management of magic, Amorlin harbored the very beasts the Malikinar hunted, putting their study and protection ahead of all else.
In contrast, Kalthos chose the sword. It was a difference of opinion that had pitted the kingdom against the Library for decades.
To Kalthos, the Library was a cesspool of sin, the Librarian its dark conductor.
“Perhaps that’s why the Paratal is visiting tomorrow,” Paskar teased with a waggle of his thick brows. “He’s going to choose one of us.” His joke was met with various forms of blanching and several dirty looks, but he only laughed.
“They ought to send one of you.” Jevin spat on the earth at Kasira’s feet. “Your soul is already damned, Kott.”
He barely had the words out before a flood of ale struck him in the face, followed by Revna’s tin cup. “Keep it up, and my blade is next.”
“Drawing your blade on a fellow Malik is—” Jevin stopped when Revna unsheathed her sword halfway with a smile that promised a complete disregard for whatever rule he was about to cite.
“You shouldn’t speak of the Librarian in such a way,” interjected one of the Malik who had been praying earlier, his eyes bright with fervor.
“Haidra strives to purify all souls of the beasts’ corruption, and that includes the Librarian and his mages.
If we do not look to save the most afflicted among us, are we truly doing Haidra’s work? ”
“We should purge them from this earth the same way we do beasts,” Revna replied.
Several other Malik grumbled their approval, and no one pushed the matter.
The conversation deviated to the Paratal’s ongoing circuit of Malikinar battalions and speculation around the recent string of thefts about camp, but Kasira’s mind remained on the Library and the stories her mother used to tell her of it.
She remembered little of her childhood before the fire that claimed her parents’ lives.
She could not recall her mother’s face, only the black hair that had fallen to her hips like a spool of silk.
But she remembered when her mother had shown her the creature living in the creek by their home.
She remembered her placing the Talowell’s scaly body in Kasira’s hands and the way her soft voice had whispered, “See? It is not so scary.”
Her mother had taught her to look at beasts and feel wonder in place of fear, had made a young Kasira dream of becoming the first Kalish mage in a century.
How foolish she had been.
“I’m telling you, we have a thief.” Revna’s voice drew her from her thoughts. “The vylor knife my father gifted me when I joined up is gone, and Kasira’s lost her silver hairpin.”
Paskar looked doubtful. “No Malik would resort to petty theft. Well, except—” His gaze flicked to Kasira, and Revna swatted his arm hard enough to make him wince.
He didn’t mean her. Her unit might not be familiar with her exact crimes, but they knew she had worked for Thane Ryarch, and there had been nothing petty about him.
But Unit Three was made up of plenty of small-time thieves who could be responsible.
Still, it was as good an opportunity as any to excuse herself.
“Kas—” Revna began.
“It’s fine,” she said, standing. “I’m tired. I’ll see you in the morning.” Paskar offered an apologetic look, but Kasira only handed him the rest of her ale and left.
Thankful to be alone at last, she washed and dressed in a fresh tunic and pants, cleaning her leathers before she returned to the tent she shared with Revna.
After polishing her sword, she climbed into her bedroll and lay staring at the ceiling, toying with the gold rosary beads she had slipped off Jevin’s wrist.
People thought of cons as long, elaborate schemes, full of detailed steps and daring moves, but a con could be as simple as telling a good lie or framing a scene in order to craft the story you wanted.
It could even be as straightforward as seizing an opportunity of distraction—say, a mug of ale flying at someone’s face—in which to act.
There were some things she could not stop herself from doing, even in her near-catatonic state.
Her heart kept beating, her lungs kept breathing, and her mind kept running through cons.
Tomorrow she would wake and face another hunt.
Her sword would carve new flesh, and she would wash the creature’s blood from her hands and return to a camp full of people who did not trust her and whose cause she did not believe in. Again and again, day after day.
Sleep. Wake. Hunt. Sleep. Wake. Hunt.
It had become the rhythm of her life, and she had fallen into it with the tenacity of a mule, drawn along by its beat to place one foot in front of the other. It got her through the day, then the week, and soon another year would pass. Another year still alive.
Another year closer to freedom.
It was a poor attempt at fulfilling the promise she and Loraya had made to each other, but Kasira would not have survived twenty years in prison, and that was exactly where she would be without the Malikinar. She had no choice, no life, nothing but that rhythm. She fell asleep to it.
Sleep. Wake. Hunt. Sleep. Wake. Hunt.
Survive.