Saber of Truth (The Consortium #1)

Chapter 1

TASK

NEXARIUM

Task stands in the shadows, blending into the darkened stone wall behind him.

His face is covered in a black mask, his hair tucked under a hood.

The cool night air kisses his face. He grips his surge-saber and his lumi-dagger, eyes tracking the woman as she walks quickly down the alleyway.

He tenses as she nears, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat.

Although he has killed more times than he can count, there is always a split second before it happens that he has to fight through.

He thought it would get easier to stomach, the more times he did it. It hasn’t.

He fixes his uncle in his head, remembering why he’s doing this. For Draven. For his empire. For their empire. Traitors cannot be left alive; they threaten everything that Draven has built, that makes Nexarium what it is. And that is what this woman is. A traitor.

She steps in front of him, oblivious to his presence.

He lunges, grabbing the woman around the middle and sliding his lumi-dagger into her stomach.

The moment his hand makes contact with her, he feels her pain — from the new wound, but also from the death of her daughter, from a childhood injury to her foot that still bothers her — filling him up and settling alongside the reservoir of agony from those he’s executed.

She screams, and he claps a gloved hand over her mouth.

He refracts the pain outside of himself, back into her, and she goes limp.

He lets out a breath. It’s done.

He lays the woman on the ground, stepping over her to leave the alleyway. He feels the new pain swirling in his bloodstream, coursing throughout his body, until it finally settles in a pocket beneath his sternum, alongside the suffering he’s collected over the years of enforcing Draven’s rule.

Someone is sure to find the woman tomorrow, once the world awakens and the shops along the street reopen.

They’ll report it to the Nexarium Force, which works out nicely for him, since he’s Draven’s Hand and a major of the Phantom Wing.

And best friends with Colonel Walther, who reports directly to the lieutenant general of the Force.

Draven will promise to undertake a full investigation, to ensure that the populace continues to feel safe, all the while knowing that he was the one who ordered the execution.

They will find the culprit, who will conveniently be another traitor, execute him, and Draven will have killed two birds with one stone — literally.

He emerges from the alleyway onto the main road, careful to stay in the shadows of the high-rises lining both sides of the street as he makes his way back to Xaria, the seat of power in Nexarium.

Although it is long after midnight, the city remains illuminated, light spilling out of windows and into the road.

The heels of his boots clip along the concrete, echoing loudly in the quiet night.

He is suddenly exhausted, crushed under the weight of the pain he is carrying — from the latest kill, yes, but also from the pain that he constantly carries around inside of him.

It pushes against his sternum, his ribs, begging to be released, but it is his greatest weapon.

He has honed it over the years, with careful instruction from Draven, and it makes him lethal.

He winces, shoving it deeper inside himself. There are still prisoners to interrogate, Guardians to command, his uncle to report to. He takes another deep breath, looking up at the night sky, and wonders for the millionth time how he got here.

He places his palm on the control panel outside the main gate, waiting for it to read his handprint and admit him.

It flashes blue, and slowly, the solid iron gate swings back, revealing Draven’s complex, Xaria.

The enormous black structure sits on forty acres of Nexarium’s desert land, so although it is enormous, it appears tiny.

Nonetheless, it is a severe presence. The fortress is all modern lines, squares built upon squares spreading out in every direction.

At the top left of the structure sits Draven’s chambers, two diagonal rooftops meeting at an off-center point in the middle to create an eave. Golden light pours out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Draven is still awake, then.

Task takes a breath and unbuttons the top of his tunic, striding towards the landing port and hangar built into the underside of the complex, where Draven’s fleet of ships is housed.

He prefers to enter this way when he can.

It avoids unwanted attention and allows him to slip in and out mostly unnoticed, which is often required for the tasks that Draven asks of him.

He isn’t lucky enough to slide in unseen this evening.

Voss, Task’s best friend and colonel of the Phantom Wing of the Nexarium Force, sticks his head out of the door of a ship he’s working on, wiping the reddish, sweat-drenched hair from his brow with his forearm.

He wears a simple black shirt and trousers, lug sole boots on his feet.

“You’re back earlier than expected,” he says, swinging his legs over the door’s ledge and jumping down. He wipes his hands on a towel, leaving behind an oily, black residue.

“You’re up later than expected,” Task fires back. He was hoping to avoid running into anybody this evening, so that he could disappear back to his chambers to try to work through some of the pain he collected. It’s still coursing under his skin, winding its way through his veins.

The agony never subsides entirely, but weaving makes it manageable.

Like emptying an overfull pitcher — if you could skim a bit of water off the top, you could safely carry it from the sink to the table.

If it was too full, though, the water would slosh over the sides.

The pain is the same way — if he doesn’t manage it, it overflows into his real life, unintentionally touching the people around him.

So he keeps his distance. Voss, in particular, has been subject to overflow more than once.

“She needed to be repaired before tomorrow,” Voss says, patting the ship next to him. “She’s my baby, and Draven is sending us to Syndaris in the morning to collect payment for the pink salt we delivered last month.”

Nexarium is known for its pink salt, coveted across the galaxy, used for healing, power enhancement, ship fuel. It’s a multipurpose mineral that Nexarium holds the monopoly on. Coupled with Draven’s Guardians, it makes Nexarium the most powerful and most feared planet in the Consortium.

Task runs a hand through his hair and sighs. That was his fuck-up. He’d taken pity on Colonel Etta when he’d made the drop last month. His daughter had been practically on her deathbed, and the pink salt was supposed to draw out the black magic.

“Syndaris hasn’t sent payment yet?” Task had thought Etta would be good for it, especially because he’d made him enter into a Binding, which should have all but guaranteed payment by the date they’d agreed upon.

December 1. Last week.

“No, which means we get the always fun job of forcing them to pay up,” Voss says. “I’m surprised Draven didn’t mention it to you already.”

Task, too, is surprised. Draven usually subscribes to the if you fuck it up, you fix it mantra, especially in Task’s case. His stomach clenches uncomfortably, heightening the oversensitivity from the new pain he’s taken in. His whole body feels like an exposed nerve ending.

He leans back against the table, which holds Voss’ maintenance tools, folding his arms across his chest and trying to feign nonchalance. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Voss shoots a look at Task, raising his eyebrows as if to say he knows Task is putting on an air right now.

He’s not wrong. Voss is one of the only people that knows Task, beyond what he does for Draven.

They’d grown up together, Voss six years older than Task.

Voss’ father, Cornelius Walther, is a descendant of what is believed to be the original Eight Great, and is one of seven noblemen to sit on Draven’s High Council, the governing body of Nexarium.

As such, Cornelius and his family live on the grounds of Xaria, along with the six other noble families.

They’ve long been operating with only seven of the Eight Great, having lost the eighth years ago.

Task has fond memories of his early childhood running rampant through Xaria with Voss, stealing food from the kitchens, hiding behind the fence on the edge of the landing port as prisoners were unloaded from Draven’s ship and brought into the dungeons.

As they got older, Voss had needled Task to live a little — convinced him to sneak out to the capital city to try their hand at flirting with women their parents wouldn’t approve of, gave him his first drink.

At one point, they’d even managed to steal one of Draven’s spaceships to take on a joyride to Vermaxian, the closet planet at only a day’s travel away.

Though Task was terrified Draven would find out, he’d found himself clambering in beside his friend, a lightness in his chest at the chance to get away from the pressures of Xaria.

But that was all before. Before Task manifested the power of pain, before Draven honed him into the weapon he’d always wanted. Before the torture, and the taskings, and the reality of adulthood had set in.

It’s been seven years since, and things couldn’t be more different. Task couldn’t be more different. That carefree time feels far away, like it happened to another person entirely. Sometimes, Task reaches for that feeling, tries to grasp it, but it’s always just out of reach.

“I know what you did for the colonel,” Voss says quietly. He comes around to lean on the table next to Task, taking off his gloves and tossing them on to the table with the tools. “You’re not as shitty of a person as you seem to think you are.”

As if his decision to try to prolong one life makes up for the hundreds that he’s taken.

“Don’t,” Task say gruffly, shaking his head.

Voss moves to put a hand on his shoulder, and Task practically launches himself to the other side of hangar. “Voss, fuck!”

“Shit, sorry,” he says, holding up his hands as if in surrender.

“You know where I just was,” Task says, bracing his hands on the wall behind him, trying to calm himself.

The pain is already about to overflow, and if Voss had touched him, it would have been excruciating for him — like Voss had immersed himself in the river of lava flowing down the side of Mount Caladius, the active volcano that has been erupting nonstop on Nexarium for the last twenty years.

Since manifesting, touching has been next to impossible.

Even a hand on Task’s shoulder, a palm on his forearm, has led to unintentional injury.

It’s lethal in battle and comes in handy when he needs to execute someone, but it’s complicated every other facet of his life and has left Task lonelier than he’s ever been.

Simple, platonic touches are few and far between, and certainly any sort of other activity has been a challenge, to say the least.

“It would have scalded you,” Task says. “I’m not doing a good job keeping it at bay tonight.”

Voss nods once, still leaning against the metal table. “Can you go weave?”

“I was on my way, before you so rudely interrupted me.” Task’s lips curl up on one side as he casts a tired glance at his friend.

“By all means, get to it then,” Voss says, gesturing to the door to Xaria proper at the far end of the hangar. “Don’t let me keep you.”

“Good luck tomorrow,” Task says. He pushes off the wall and gives Voss a salute from afar. He presses his hand to the reader at the back of the hangar, waiting for it to slide open. He enters the dimly lit bowels of Xaria, heading down the corridor to his chambers to weave before he goes to bed.

In his chambers, he makes quick work of unbuttoning his tunic and tossing it over the desk chair in the corner of his room.

He shucks his boots next, and pulls off his trousers, almost frenetic in his need to remove the offensive garments.

He rifles through the black dresser drawer for lighter, softer clothes.

When the pain is like this, almost nothing sits on his skin comfortably.

It’s like someone has set fire to his entire body, a flame blazing across its surface.

It is his fault, he acknowledges, for letting it get to this point.

He should have been better about weaving, about tracking how much pain he was ingesting.

At a certain point, though, Draven’s missions had bled together.

Task was performing executions as he would brush his teeth every morning; it was rote, mindless.

Which he supposes led him to where he stands now, on the brink of eruption.

He pulls on the black woven t-shirt and lounge pants, made from the finest silk that the industrial planet Oraxis has to offer, and breathes out. It’s still uncomfortable, but much better than the thick, scratchy material of his guard’s uniform.

He walks to his bed, situated in the middle of the room.

Black, like his other furnishings, with gray silk sheets and a gray comforter, it sits just off the floor.

Two metal rods arc over it, creating a canopy.

He crouches, reaching below the bed for the place he knows the loose black tile will be.

The floor is cool against his knees, and he is tempted to just lay down on it, let the heat of his body drain into it.

That would only be a temporary solution, though, so he pushes his arm further underneath, finding the tile and digging his nails beneath it, popping it up.

He pulls out a stack of wooden disks, all infused with blue, glowing threads.

He sets them down and reaches further into the hollow compartment to look for the blanks.

He needs an unblemished surface to push the pain into, once it’s out of his body.

He pulls out another stack, grimacing as his arm scrapes the underside of the bed.

He turns, settling back against it, and begins to weave.

He reaches into himself, thinking of the reservoir in his chest, and imagines pulling threads of the pain out.

Sometimes he remembers a particular story, or an ailment.

More often than not, it is merely a mass of agony that he is drawing from, no real differentiating characteristics.

He pulls on a tendril, carefully, and forms it into a set of overlapping triangles.

He weaves them together at the tips, and presses it into the wooden block next to him.

It barely makes a dent in the reservoir. He hangs his head back, letting it fall against the side of the bed, and he knows it will be a long night.