Chapter 9
Asshole Light-Lickers
Hours bled into morning again, and Eiko’s neck had grown painfully stiff with the way her head kept bobbing and jerking upright again.
Every time she almost passed out, a boot scraped nearby, and she snapped straight as a tree—or straight as a tree that had been hunched over by ferocious, cyclonic winds.
She couldn’t feel her feet.
She couldn’t feel her fingers.
Her uniform stuck to her skin with dried sea spray and sweat.
The little monster was very quiet.
Hymn?
Mmm?
You can’t go to sleep, she told him. You’re supposed to be manifesting.
I’m not sleeping, he lied sleepily.
She wanted to laugh, but if she laughed, they would whack her, and if they whacked her, she would absolutely fall down and not even a terrifying manifestation would scare her back up again.
Just as the thought occurred, the air split open with a sound like a cracking glacier, vibrating Eiko’s teeth in her skull.
An enormous weight pressed against her front, and something hot and molten brushed over the bare skin of her face.
Kaito let out a ragged breath beside her.
Relief.
He had succeeded.
She knew it the way she knew the shape of his hand around her elbow. The way she knew what the set of his shoulders would look like simply from the way his breathing changed.
This molten beast was definitely his monster.
“Well done, recruit.” Alessandra spoke this time. “Oath.” She didn’t even sound tired. Withstanding this brutal cliff was apparently a walk in the park for her.
Kaito’s voice came out low and rough. The oath sounded different coming from him …
perhaps because Eiko had never envisaged him as a soldier.
As a scoundrel, sure. A miner, of course.
A criminal? If pushed. But this … this noble and revered soldier, full of danger and immense responsibility? Actually, it suited him perfectly.
His footsteps passed behind her, close enough that his hand was able to subtly brush the back of hers. It was less of a reassurance and more of a warning.
You better fucking survive this, or I’m going to kill you.
She felt unbearably heavier with him gone.
Ren succeeded with the dawn, doubling the weight against her.
His monster produced a pressure that crawled up her spine, stabbing hot nails into her skin and pounding against the backs of her eyes, trying to force its way out through her skull.
She had to bite down on her tongue to prevent any sounds from escaping.
Ren’s breath hitched as his monster manifested, and then a roar exploded from deep inside his chest, blending relief and fury. So much fury. His monster roared back, just as furious. The cliff shook, and Eiko held her breath, her blood running cold.
Did his monster break the Silencing? she asked Hymn.
For a moment, she could feel nothing but the echo of that horrible noise. It rang through her chest like a bell. When it finally eased, Ren was speaking.
“I was born in fear,” he rasped, his voice almost unrecognisable. “I will rise in silence. My name is nothing until the banners call me.”
It seems he succeeded. Hymn sounded surprised.
“Go.” Alessandra released him.
Ren’s footsteps were uneven, limping. Eiko almost sagged in his direction.
Her world had shrunk to the size of a clifftop, the feel of the wind, and the changing heat as the sun rose again, promising to set again before she completed her task.
Rion’s monster came soon after Ren’s, shuddering the clifftop with a prolonged, humming growl that forced Eiko’s teeth to clack together and her ribs to ache with the vibrations that travelled through her body.
Rion’s breath hitched, almost like a sob, before steadying.
“Oath,” Alessandra demanded.
“I was born in fear,” Rion managed. “I will rise in silence. My name is nothing until the banners call me.”
Eiko wanted to grab her and refuse to let go. Instead, she listened to the sound of her footsteps until she couldn’t hear them over the whip of the wind.
Ky took only a minute longer, and it made sense, in a way. They did everything together. Of course this would be no different.
The air compressed and then inverted. It was the only way she could think to describe it.
Like the space around them had been turned inside out, and the cliff now stood inside a bubble of utter wrongness.
Every old hurt in her body woke up at once.
The scars and scratches on the backs of her hands and arms, the bruises on her body from falling off the train and being trampled in Blackreach.
The ache behind her eyes, still throbbing from the vivid colours she had tried to consume all at once.
All of it flared and then recoiled, as though something had reached out, tasted it, and then pushed it back where it came from.
Hymn whimpered. That one is … sharp. It cuts both ways.
She didn’t know what that meant.
“I was born in fear,” Ky said quietly. “I will rise in silence. My name is nothing until the banners call me.”
“Go,” Alessandra said.
Ky’s hand brushed hers. It lingered for half a heartbeat. Then it was gone.
Her world shrank even further. She was suddenly desperate to hug Ky and Rion, to hold them close and tight and thank the blessed sun that their group had somehow, by some fucking miracle, survived this.
But not all of them had.
Because Eiko still stood there.
“I don’t want that one,” Ilara said, before she walked away. And she wasn’t the only one. Several other footsteps followed her.
“I’ll also pass,” Alessandra said with a chuckle.
Eiko frowned. What in the darkness?
“You know that’s not how this works, Alessandra.” The gruff, older voice didn’t belong to Chasin, but it was familiar.
Cairn Torven, she finally realised. The guard from the train. Maelon had said that he was Chasin’s first soldier—so he belonged to the Eclipse banner.
“Chasin handpicks his recruits,” Cairn continued. “And only after watching them train. He doesn’t accept leftovers.”
“Then she’ll be bannerless, if she survives.” There was a distinct shrug in Alessandra’s voice. “But I don’t want her.” She walked away—several others leaving with her—without waiting for Cairn’s response, though the older man swore colourfully at her until they were out of hearing range.
Eiko strained to hear how many people remained on the clifftop with her, but they were too silent.
She could only assume that the other section leaders under Ilara and Alessandra had left with their captains, and whoever worked under Chasin remained with him, though he hadn’t introduced any section leaders for the Eclipse banner during his speech.
It’s just Cairn and Chasin, Hymn told her. Eclipse doesn’t have section leaders. It’s a much smaller organisation than the other banners. It usually only has a captain and a first soldier.
Gradually, the shadows shifted again as the sun crawled up her body. The wind changed speed and direction. Her lips cracked and bled. At some point, her knees stopped shaking because they simply didn’t have the strength.
The sun dropped, and she imagined the sky as a molten thing, full of pain just like her, and then darkly bruised as night came around, just like her. Her muscles trembled, then failed. She caught herself on her cane, but barely. Her shoulders screamed.
Hymn was a tiny, tight knot around her heart.
I can try again, he offered weakly. I’ll keep trying. Maybe if I—
No, she thought, a strange, stubborn calm settling over her. If you tear yourself out, you might break the Silencing, and then Chasin will kill you. Is he still here?
He hasn’t moved.
She shifted her weight from her numb, aching foot to her other numb, aching foot. And Cairn?
They’re both still here.
Are they suffering, at least? she asked hopefully.
They seem unaffected, Hymn replied.
Assholes.
Yeah, he agreed with a little too much enthusiasm. Asshole light-lickers!
She spluttered out a sound that might have been a laugh, or maybe she was choking and dying. Footsteps approached, and a cane whacked sideways across her stomach, knocking her right off her feet, her cane clattering from her hand.
“Dark be damned, girl, this is pathetic.” Cairn stepped away, and she regained her feet in a very wobbly, stiff, and ungraceful display.
When the sun finally broke over the horizon for the second time, she was more bone than woman. More will than flesh. She didn’t realise she had started to sway until a hand caught her elbow.
Gloved. Warm. Strong.
“Recruit.”
It was that single word again, scraping the air apart just as it had the last time Chasin had spoken, the sound fractal and grated.
Hymn escaped to her ankle, twisting there and shuddering inside her boot, too afraid to make a sound.
Eiko’s head jerked up, even though she couldn’t see Chasin.
Her knees buckled and he latched onto her other elbow instead of letting her fall.
Only his grip kept her upright, now. He let her sway there for a heartbeat, as if measuring something, before his right hand slid from her elbow to her forearm, closing around the place Hymn usually liked to coil.
His thumb brushed once over her wrist. Searching. Again.
Monsters know each other by touch, Hymn frantically reminded her. Don’t let him find me!
Chasin’s grip loosened and fell away.
He signed something—she heard the whisper of leather, the shift of his clothing, and then he stepped back.
“Then she’ll be bannerless,” Cairn replied to him with a sigh, before there was a new grip on her elbow, far rougher than Chasin’s. “Back to the barracks with you, blind girl.”
Eiko swallowed. Her throat felt like sand, and for the first time since boarding the train back in Stonesigh, she began to cry. It was soundless, but the hot tears slid down her cheeks as Cairn gave her stiff body a slight shove in the direction he wanted her to go.
She had … failed.
She had failed.
Everyone else had succeeded, even Ron, who had succeeded so hard he died—