40. Rohak
Chapter 40
Rohak
A fter healing Sol, Faylinn quickly lost consciousness, clearly using too much of the magic within her blood. Immediately I scooped her from the ground, Thandi copying my movements with Sol, and we moved back toward the inn. She was light in my arms and made soft little snorts as she slept with her face pressed to my tunic.
I’d never seen Rune Magic of that caliber before. Every child, Mage or Vessel, was taught the basics of runes and the power of innate magic in our blood. But true masters of the arcane art were few and far between. I racked my brain as I carried Faylinn back, unsure if I knew of any Rune Masters. Their craft was obsolete, Mages choosing to focus on the magic they could pull rather than what was readily available to them.
Perhaps it was something we took for granted for years, and now it was a lost art. So lost that even Alois couldn’t read the book we found in the Keeper’s library all those years ago.
I hummed quietly to myself.
I must find a way to bring her back to the capital with me. She is who Alois needs.
She shuffled a bit in my arms, burying her head against my neck so her little huffs of breath feathered against my exposed skin. I hadn’t ever held a woman like this, even my trysts were short and perfunctory, and I couldn’t tell if I hated or loved the way she clung to me. She was strong beneath my fingers, her body clearly used to manual labor and hard work, but she was much too slender. Whether by choice or the lack of food over the past week, Faylinn needed to take care of herself, especially after the energy she expended while saving Sol.
The walk back to the inn was short and I was grateful to release Faylinn into the waiting arms of one of the villagers. Yet, as soon as she was gone, I felt empty and bereft without her. I rubbed my chest absently, my magic grumbling at losing her proximity.
The villager quickly took her from me before slamming the door to the inn in my face. They still weren’t trusting of us, and I couldn’t blame them. If what they said was true, my Mages killed one of their community members in front of them. While I trained my Mages to be cutthroat and even bloodthirsty, I never would have authorized the execution of justice in such a manner.
I turned from the inn with a grunt, meeting my remaining Mages outside the wards.
“What now, General?” The few of my company sent to retrieve Faylinn’s things returned, one clutching a leather satchel that clinked as she moved, another holding two scorched vials.
“Is that all that remained?”
Cal gave a sharp nod.
“Everything else was destroyed in the fire, though these somehow survived.” He shook the little vials, and I took both from his hands along with the leather satchel. I stuffed the two blackened vials into her bag before cinching it shut.
“Now we help them clean up. Air Mages, Earth Mages, refill your reserves. We’ll need your power in abundance before the day is through. I want debris cleared, graves dug and marked, and the bodies of all the deceased gathered in that clearing.” I gestured to the small valley just beyond the gates. Not next to the farms, but a bit beyond. It was a little patch of grass surrounded by wildflowers and bathed in the sunlight—a beautiful spot for eternal rest. Someone else must have thought the same, as I saw two markers in the distance.
The Mages voiced their assent as they dispersed to carry out my command. The only Mage who remained was Lex, his Vessels, Ilyas and Sasori, by his side. They looked worse for wear—blood coated their clothes, skin, and matted-down their hair. Lex looked particularly disturbed, like he was fighting the ghosts of his past, the dark circles under his eyes betraying the lack of sleep and immense amount of stress the last week had brought.
“Lex, I need you to refill your Pleasure reserves, if you can. I’ll need you to try and calm the population, if necessary.” Lex gave a short nod.
“How do you expect me to do that, sir? I highly doubt any of them”—he gestured tiredly to the inn—“are giving off any type of happy emotion right now. And I really doubt any of them are going to start fucking so I can watch and refill my reserves.”
Ilyas snorted but quickly schooled his features when he saw my expression.
“There’s a pleasure house in the next village over. It’s a half-day ride to the east. Take Ilyas and one of the horses. Leave now. I will keep an eye on Sasori while you’re gone. I have some investigating to do, and she can help me search.”
Lex closed his eyes and cracked his neck before agreeing and motioning for Ilyas to follow him back toward the gate and the forest where the horses were tied.
As soon as they were out of earshot, I turned to Sasori.
“You’re with me. We’re going into the inn, I have some . . . questions to ask.”
She looked at me skeptically. “What makes you think they’re going to let you in?”
I held up the bag in my hand. “I have supplies for their Healer. Plus, I have you.”
She looked at me quizzically.
“Those who have suffered a trauma such as this tend to find more comfort in women, I’ve found.” Sasori rolled her eyes.
“Been in many of these situations, General?”
“Yes.” I was curt and Sasori straightened at my rebuke. She wiped uselessly at the blood that covered her uniform and face before giving me a nod. We passed the wards easily, the runes either sensing that we meant to help, or they had run out of magic. I wasn’t well-versed enough to truly know if Blood Magic could run out. It’s a question I’d have to ask Faylinn later .
I knocked twice on the inn door before it finally swung open, revealing a haggard looking man with two children clinging to his legs, another standing like a shadow behind him.
“What?” he barked. His posture was stiff, his arms blocking the door.
“I brought Faylinn’s supplies,” I said as I held up the bag, the vials inside tinkling slightly as it shook in my fist. I kept my tone even and low, placating even, as if I was coaxing a wounded animal from its hiding spot.
The man grunted before snatching the bag from my hand.
“She won’t be needin’ these for a while, I reckon.” His tone was still harsh, but the words sparked a conversation.
“She sleeps for a long time after using her magic?” The man only gave a curt nod before regarding me with a cool look.
“You’re not really welcome here. Especially right now.”
“I can understand that. You just had your village destroyed, your lives upturned. You’re wary and mistrustful, it’s not uncommon.”
“Seen a lot of this to know what’s common, eh?” His voice took on a sharp quality to it, his body vibrating with anger. I held my hands in a placating gesture, but Sasori stepped in before the situation could escalate.
Thank the gods .
“What he means, sir, is that there’s a lot of sadness, anger, and pain in your people right now. You only trust your own. We’re outsiders. And outsiders are what caused the destruction of your village.”
The man sucked his teeth, the children still clinging to his legs.
“Aye. And your people are the ones who started it.” He thrust a finger in my direction.
“Would you mind telling me about that?” I asked, finally hopeful that I could get some sort of information from these people.
The man looked at me for a minute before nodding his head. “Jus’ not in front of the children. They’ve seen and heard too much as it is.” He thrust the bag behind him at the largest child. “Tal, take your sisters and Ms. Faylinn’s bag. Go sit and watch over her until she wakes.”
Tal grabbed the bag from his father while prying his little sisters from their father’s legs.
“Tal, would you like some help? I know a few games we could play while we wait.” Sasori’s voice had taken on a soft quality I had never heard from her before .
Tal glanced nervously between Sasori and his father before nodding once.
Sasori turned to me, and I raised my eyebrows at her as if to say, “see this is why I needed a woman.” I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with kids. She simply rolled her eyes at me before taking the hand of each of the girls.
“Why are you all bloody?” I heard one of them ask as Sasori led them into the inn.
The man watched them go for a minute, before closing the door and gesturing for me to follow him.
“The Corner”—he gestured to a bar on the corner of the street—“held a bunch of us at the beginning, when your people first showed up. But we quickly evacuated and fled to the safety of the inn when the rebels appeared later. Not all of us made the trip across and a few got stuck in the building. Your Mages were some of them.”
I stared at the building, some of it was burned, but it was mostly intact.
“How did it avoid destruction?” I wondered.
“The rebels needed a place to sleep and regroup. They used the bar since they couldn’t get into The Curious.”
I looked at the building next to The Corner and noticed that the entire shop was in pristine condition, as if the rest of the street and village hadn’t been reduced to rubble.
“No one can go near it. There’s wards and it repels everyone. Even us,” he said in answer to my unasked question.
“Are my Mages still inside The Corner?” The man shrugged. “My guess is prolly not. If the rebels used this, then they prolly killed everything inside, but it’s worth a look.”
He pushed open the door to The Corner and I was immediately hit with the smell of rot and decaying flesh. I paused at the door for a minute, covering my nose with my elbow, breathing deeply through my mouth to control the excess of saliva that pooled under my tongue. I turned to the side and spit, trying not to retch.
“Welp, I think we found your Mages, General,” the man said, acting as if the smell wasn’t overwhelming.
After a minute, I got my breathing under control and wiped my watering eyes with my hands, to only wish I hadn’t.
There, nailed to the walls, were the heads of the Mages and Vessels I sent here earlier in the month, looking like a sick version of the hunting trophies that also adorned the walls. Their blood, now dried into a deep brown, slipped down the walls like a macabre painting. Their tongues lolled from their mouths, swollen and rotting, their eyes staring unseeing ahead, looks of horror and pain forever plastered on their faces.
Under the heads was a message presumably written in their blood, though it looked fresher, like it was meant for us to find today.
Death to the Warlord.
I set my mouth in a grim line, taking in each of the faces before me.
Fuck. Alois wasn’t going to like this. I debated even telling him when we got back, knowing it would only stoke his anger into an inferno. She had evaded us for fifteen years now, hiding somewhere in the South with her sympathizers and Allied defectors. My mouth curled into an involuntary sneer at the thought.
How could you defect to someone who sanctioned that?
She had grown bolder recently, and this was her most aggressive act yet.
My mind drifted to the Earth Mage commander we left incapacitated outside.
I need to question him sooner rather than later .
The list of things I needed to do while here was growing ever longer, and I sighed in frustration.
“Help me get them down, please. I’d like to bury them with the other bodies.”
The man just looked at me strangely. “You think I’m going to help you? No, I’m not. Not after your people came here and disrupted our lives, bringing the rebels into our town.” He punctuated each statement with a jab of his finger in my direction. “If you hadn’t sent them here, looking for godsdamn Keepers, the rebels would never have shown, and my wife and babies would still be alive. This”—he gestured to the heads on the wall and the destruction outside—“is on you, General. This is your mess. You clean it up.”
With that, he stalked from the bar, leaving me no choice but to take the heads from the wall one by one, all the while turning over the words he spit.
My fault.