Chapter 5
Chapter five
Harkin
Vibrations rumbled underfoot, the worn hardwood slats rattling together impatiently. It was a telltale sign that the parcel of documents regarding my mission had arrived, delivered at the hand of Claudian’s spymaster.
The tremors peaked, demanding, and I rolled my eyes with equal measures of annoyance and fondness.
Safiya Keres had proven herself incapable of announcing herself with a simple knock.
She stood at my door, brown skin limned in the half light. Her shoulder rested against the wooden frame, and she regarded me with an unimpressed look on her face. Dark curls fell into her eyes as she tossed the dossier at me haphazardly.
I fumbled to catch them, shooting her a halfhearted glare that neither of us believed. “Having a dark day today, Keres?”
“You could say that,” she huffed with a glower. Safiya pushed past me, entering my home uninvited as she so often did. She moved into the kitchen without another word and plucked an apple from the basket.
“Would you like to come in?” I offered, sarcastically.
“Sure, thanks.” She shot me a wry smile as she sunk her teeth into my stolen fruit.
Safiya collapsed onto the settee with an exaggerated sigh, kicking her feet up over the arm. “So, distract me. What does Claudian want with Seren Corso?”
“Hard to say. Claudian was vague as ever, and it doesn’t look like you’ve been much help,” I teased, glad to see some of the tension melting from her shoulders.
The file was much thinner than her usual boon.
I shuffled through the meager documents, noting Seren’s general description and her last known residence in the seaside village of Kis Temare.
I was used to Safiya providing a whole host of information, but there was little else known about Seren.
It was not unexpected given that the girl had been raised in Ordéles, far from the Kingdom of Acsilla.
“Anyway,” I continued as she rolled her eyes at me playfully. “I am to collect Seren Corso and deliver her to Claudian. I’ll be away for a while.”
Safiya raised her brows in question.
“What’s that look for?” I packed my provisions methodically, tucking the papers into my pack and tightly fastening the straps. I made sure to include extra supplies and a second cloak in case Seren Corso needed them for the journey.
“Your missions are usually brief, that’s all. Bribery, threats, and murder don’t tend to take very long, mercenary.” Safiya pulled herself into a sitting position as she considered me, chin resting on her palm.
“Lay off, Saf. This mission is different; I’ll be in enemy territory.
Alone. Everyone will want to kill me. And even if it were a standard mission, it’s not as if I enjoy doing those things.
I don’t have a choice.” My throat tightened at the reminder of all I had done in Prince Claudian’s name. “I thought you understood that.”
Our friendship had been founded on our mutual distrust for the royals who employed us and the knowledge that our actions hurt real people. We had bonded over the fact that we were powerless to change our situations, despite the strife they brought us.
Safiya flinched, expression crestfallen, and I knew the same thoughts had passed through her mind. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
I sheathed my dagger at my side, a motion that was mindless in its familiarity. “Lock up when you leave,” I told her, in place of a goodbye.
“Safe travels, Harkin.” Her voice followed me into the cold.
Equinox whickered softly as I brushed through her silky black coat and laced the straps of my riding gear. I pulled the saddle tight against her taut belly, waiting for her to exhale before I fitted it properly.
“Sneaky girl,” I chided affectionately. I mounted, and with a loving pat on her neck, we began our journey.
Though the air was chilled with a sharp autumn breeze, snow had yet to fall, and the path was steady. We carried on for two days, stopping for rest when our weary bones demanded it.
I rubbed the feeling back into my legs more times than I could count.
Tünécris—sprites that embodied each branch of mágik—crossed our path a time or two. The vestiges of their power drifted overhead in orbs of blue and green and red. I admired them as they danced about the sky, but I was grateful they did not pester us with their tricks.
It was too much to hope that we would not stumble upon creatures more fearsome.
Darkness crept along the edges of the woods, casting crooked shadows over the land. The breeze rolled in, chilled and ominous, and a shiver ran down my spine. Sweat beaded in the hollow of my throat despite the cold.
Equinox snorted, ears drawing back tight to her skull. She tossed her head, baring her teeth. She could feel it too, that uneasy shade creeping across our path.
I smoothed my hand over her neck, shushing her as we drew deeper into the night.
The sound of her hoofbeats pounded a steady rhythm on the hard packed earth. Her heavy exhales sent plumes of steam curling through the moonlight.
“Easy, girl,” I murmured, but there was no consoling her.
Equinox reared back, hooves in the air and a high whine rising from her throat.
My grip failed, and I sprawled to the forest floor.
Unforgiving earth met my shoulder, the rocky ground cutting into me with bruising force. The wind knocked out of me—chest hollowed. I coughed hard as my lungs tried and failed to draw in another breath.
My mare was a streak of black as she rocketed through the trees, manók nipping at her heels. She kicked, and her hoof caught one of the elves squarely in the snout.
The creature collapsed limply to the ground, but a dozen more scrambled past to take its place. They converged on Equinox, tittering and leering with their foxlike faces.
She screeched as they scrambled up her legs and sank their fangs into her haunches.
“Stay away from my horse!”
I splayed my hands, ignoring the ache in my shoulder. My eyes fluttered shut as I drew a powerful gust of wind. The trees rattled with the force of it, leaves whipping past my face with eager efficiency. The swell of it filled my belly, pushed up through my chest until it was near to bursting.
With a shout, I unleashed the gale upon them.
Their lithe bodies flipped and twisted in midair, screeching all the while. They clawed for Equinox—relentlessly snapping their needle-teeth into her flesh—but they were no match against the force of my mágik.
I breathed deeper into the power, raising both arms before me. I wrenched them apart, directing two opposing currents.
The manók tore straight through, blood and organs spewing forth. What was left of their desecrated bodies scattered through the tree branches and tumbled through the brush.
Red rained down upon me, splattering my face. I wiped it away with the arm of my cloak, tipping my head back against the roots of a sturdy oak.
“Equinox,” I whispered. I could no longer see her through the gaps in the trees.
Pain lanced through me, fire in my abdomen.
One of the manók must have survived, for it was upon me now. It sliced through the skin of my hips, buried its teeth in my bone.
I scrambled for my dagger, but my grasp came away empty. I clawed at the beast with my hands, fur and dirt and blood catching under my fingernails.
It only clamped harder, drawing a bellow of pain from my lips.
“Equinox!” I shouted, desperate.
The manók snarled around its mouthful of flesh and bone. It shook its head from side to side, tearing the meat from me.
I glared into its slitted fox-eyes, sweating and panting.
“Fuck you,” I ground out through clenched teeth. I pushed against it, desperate, but it did not release me.
The sound of rumbling on stone and Equinox’s throaty roar was a welcome terror.
I wrapped my fingers around the creature's neck, wrenched it free from my side. My trusty mare reached the manók before it could flee—before it could even blink.
Her jaw clamped around the manók’s skull, crushing it in one blood-gushing, bone-crunching crack. She spat it out, wrung out and lifeless.
She nuzzled her soft nose across my chest, smearing my cloak with blood, and exhaled a satisfied breath.
“Yes… I’ll live,” I groaned. I stroked my hand across her broad cheek. “Thank you.”
The wound at my hip ached, and I feared it would leave a nasty scar. I packed it tight with dressing fabric.
Equinox stood vigil over me as I drifted in and out of sleep.
We breathed easier when the light of day painted over the sky once more.
Equinox and I traversed the ever changing landscape, the only consistency the small stream which would lead us to the ocean and our destination.
As the final rise of mountains came and passed, indicating the border between Acsilla and Ordelés, I felt the grip of the mágikal barrier which separated the two tugging at me before finally releasing.
The barrier had been raised by the Rázuri after they had left Ordelés behind, hoping to forge a better life free of the persecution humans had turned upon them.
Acsilla had risen, but Ordelés had been left mágikless.
Power slowly drained away from the land around me.
It was tangible in the heaviness of the air, pressing down around me, and in the withering wildlife which struggled to survive.
Sadness panged through me, at the thought of living this way.
But the people of Ordelés had never known any different.
The barrier had existed far longer than living memory.
I longed for tall mountain peaks and towering trees in every shade of green as I left them behind for a flatland of sparse brown woods. The breeze tasted of salt and brine the closer I moved to Ordéles and its grayscale seaside villages.
On the third evening, I came upon a small cottage along the water's edge in Kis Temare. The last known whereabouts of Seren Corso.
A spill of dwellings dotted the landscape, firelit windows and smoke curling from chimneys foretold the beginning of civilization.