Chapter 8 Harkin
Chapter eight
Harkin
The Ordelésan Palace was a looming threat of a fortress rising imposingly on the brightening skyline.
Great stone turrets stabbed at the purple-pink clouds of dawn.
Drakány and Gryffem lurched over barren trellises, cruelly twisted stone faces leering in perfectly carved spite.
A wall wrapped inanely around the palace, too short to maintain any real defense.
The human king was proud of his home—boastful and overcompensating. The human king was weak. He refused to take any real actions to protect his people from Rázuri, and the Guardians were clearly expendable in his eyes. Surely, he would not notice when Seren Corso disappeared.
Equinox’s steady gait carried me ever closer to the lengthening walls.
Ornate crenellations rose and fell in waves along the highest stone peaks, but no Guardians appeared at their stations. The King’s Palace was gloriously unarmed.
King Tarquin of Acsilla maintained a consistent string of attacks on the human kingdom but had no motivation for true war. He had no stomach for it, truly.
The Rázuri King was perfectly content to sit upon his throne and be waited upon while his people struggled. As long as he did not see the suffering, the king could convince himself that all was right in the world. He did not even realize that, had he wished it, Ordelés would have fallen years ago.
I knew that Prince Claudian felt much stronger about the state of our world.
In the years that we had worked together, Claudian had made it very clear that he would rule over all of Szrestia if it were up to him.
I had the ever growing suspicion over the last few months that that was exactly the prince’s ultimate plan.
After all, he had paid me to eliminate countless individuals close to the king. He was constantly whispering in dark corners with his spymaster. As time went on, the prince became more and more desperate. His subtle tasks and movements before had been replaced with outright murder.
It was unsurprising. I expected royalty to be cruel.
They cared for themselves first and always. There was no doubt in my mind that the prince would kill everyone living in Ordelés, and half of his own citizens in Acsilla, if it meant that he would be made King of Szrestia.
What I could not figure out was how Seren Corso fit into the narrative, and why her return by the solstice was so important.
But I was not paid to judge the morality of my employer. I was paid to get the job done. I had not failed before, the stakes were far too high. I would certainly not fail now, with Claudian’s threat a looming blade above my throat.
Equinox huffed to a stop, flank swaying as she shifted her hooves in the shadow of the curtain wall. There were cracks in the low stone that would make for suitable handholds had I needed to scale my way across, but there was also a small wrought iron gate beside an old watchtower.
I watched with baited breath, waiting as the minutes ticked by.
Not a single Guardian took up the post.
“Are humans truly so ignorant as to leave the gate to their kingdom unguarded?” I whispered to Equinox. “Or is it their hubris?”
She snorted a disinterested reply.
“Ahh.” I nodded sagely. “Yes, ignorance. I believe you’re right, old girl.”
I settled Equinox beyond the tree line, carefully noting our point of entrance.
“Be ready. We may need to make a hasty get away,” I told her, rubbing her soft snout with affection.
I straightened my cloak and marched back toward the gate. I slipped through with ease, securing the latch behind me. The southern edge of the curtain wall led me around the outskirts of the grounds.
The clash of steel rang in the distance, and my feet carried me toward it on instinct.
A grand structure rose before me, all sharp edges. Sunlight glared off its long windows, momentarily blinding me.
I raised an arm, shadowing my gaze, and I found that I was not alone.
Mágik swelled within my chest, ready and waiting to be wielded.
“Who goes there?” The figure shouted, drawing his sword as he approached.
I harnessed my mágik, wrapping a blanket of calm around him. I embedded in him the urge to heed my command—forced it deep in his chest. “Follow me.”
He wove through the shadow of the great building, never taking his unblinking eyes from me. Where I moved, he followed.
The long stretch of courtyards and bubbling fountains disappeared as I positioned us between the curtain wall and the cathedral. I wondered for a brief moment who they worshipped there—it certainly wasn't the Three Goddesses. The humans had turned their backs on our faith long ago.
“You’re going to help me,” I commanded, tightening my mágik around his will.
He nodded, slack-jawed.
“Fucking hell…” I loosened my hold, the barest whisper, and awareness flooded back into his eyes. “I’m looking for a Guardian within your ranks.”
“Who?” He asked, voice flat. His eyes darted to my left a split second before the whistle of steel cut through the air.
I jerked away, but the second Guardian was already swinging.
She brought her sword in a sweeping arc that would have lopped my head clean off had my mágik not leapt to my call—eager, hungry.
I wrestled writhing bands of air around her weapon, ripping it from her grasp without laying a finger upon it.
“Ráz—” I filled her lungs near to bursting, stopping her before she could scream out the word that would bring an entire battalion upon me. She wheezed, hand gripping her throat wildly. She tried to cough, but I pressed the breath firmly back inside.
“None of that.” I called her sword to my waiting hand, a slow trailing arc through the sky. It settled in my palm, the hilt already warm. “Goodnight.”
I smiled, a quick flash of teeth, and drove the hilt hard into the side of her skull.
The Guardian crumpled, head lolling into the grass.
A branch snapped behind me, and I spun, but the first Guardian was quick without my power pinning him. He landed a swift blow to the back of my knee that sent me sprawling.
I landed hard on my injured hip, crying out in pain.
“You should have helped me when I asked.” I glared menacingly, throwing every ounce of my air mágik against him.
His limbs locked, and his jaw clenched, but his eyes remained wide. He fought to free himself against my invisible bindings to no avail.
“I should kill you…” I muttered, rising and dusting myself off. I favored my uninjured side as I limped toward him. “But I need that armor of yours to remain spotless.”
I sidled closer, fighting against the cloying fog of his fear. It filled me like smoke in my lungs, but it did not stop me from pressing my fingertips to his temples—from burrowing deep in his mind.
I poured wave after wave of calm and exhaustion and forgetfulness into his body. I willed them to flow deep in his blood.
His eyes fluttered, my mágik draining him with every twitch of my fingers.
“Sleep.”
The Guardian collapsed in a heap at my feet.
I made quick work of removing his armor, strapping it to my own body with careful movements. The steel gleamed in the morning light.
With the bodies stashed hastily in the bushes, I stumbled upon some semblance of a garden. Little more than brambles and frosted grass survived in the reaches of early autumn, but at the far edge were hedges that still bloomed with pink and white flowers.
Under them lay a woman, dark hair damp and splayed beneath her head.
Her chin tilted mournfully toward the fading moon.
As the first rays of the sun crested the treeline, golden light rippled across her features.
Gone was the moon limned blue that tinted her skin.
Soft warm sun trailed its fingers across the line of her nose and shone off her eyes like beacons.
Her fingers twisted in blades of frosted grass, her expression solemn under the pink sky. A sword lay just in her reach, betraying her status as a Guardian.
I was inexplicably drawn to her and the gentle slope of her neck, the sharp line of her jaw. I moved closer against my own will, desperate to catch a glimpse of the freckles I swore I saw dusted on her pale cheeks.
My hands twitched at my sides, imagining the feel of her smooth skin beneath them. My lips at her throat. Something in her called to me, and I was powerless to look away.
Only when she stirred—long limbs stretching and unfurling—was I broken from my strange reverie. I broke free with a sharp inhale.
I slipped away, following her and the sounds of Guardians preparing for the day.
I did my best to shake off the temporary insanity that had overcome me to gaze upon a Guardian with such blank minded reverence.
It was a trick of the light, I convinced myself.
The moon and the sun merely having a laugh at my expense.
The sounds of clashing swords and shuffling feet grew louder as I rounded a stout stone tower. The training field came into view, and I observed from a distance, watching them practice in a triangular formation.
The Guardians began their routine, and I remarked on the lack of finesse and flair the human forces had. Very little distinguished one Guardian from another. Armor varied slightly from person to person, but they all walked the same, listened the same. They waited for orders and followed them.
Some Guardians were fully bedecked in shining steel, swinging their weapons in merciless arcs, while others darted around clumsily in leather armor. The latter were packed too closely together, fumbling with inexperience.
Decorated instructors shouted corrections at them, forcing the formation to flow and shift.
Keeping my hands locked formally behind my back, I edged toward the group.