38. Kasten
Two days. I had two days to get through my endless list of administration before all my time would be wasted by the king and Prince Stirling in Adenburg.
I wished I could spend every second of it with Sophie instead. But I’d insisted on handling the logistics of distributing Callum’s next batch of kryalcomy personally. It wasn’t worth the risk of the wrong person finding out about our devices and telling the king. I trusted every person within Kasomere’s regiment, but my commanders still kept the system tightly regulated, as we couldn’t afford to take chances. Since we were about to recruit more people to our ranks, we had to be more careful than ever. I wanted everything connected with the army to be seamless for Sophie in my absence, even if it was just for a week.
I glanced at the wooden box on my table, the new sedative nestled inside. She was a genius. Her concoction would change everything. The king and Maegistrium wouldn’t be able to ignore halfsouls brought right to them. I just needed Lord Lyrason to provide them. Even better if I was already in Adenburg when he released them.
Who would have thought Sophie would give me the missing piece to bring him down.
Sophie….
I slapped the desk to snap my attention back to my work. Why was it so hard to be away from her, even when I saw her every day? Even war and murderers weren’t enough of a distraction.
Sir Tristan burst into the room without knocking. I looked up in surprise as the breeze from the door dislodged my supply lists. “What is it?” His expression told me it was nothing good.
“It sounds really bad, General. The Red Men have sent an emergency message?—”
I cut him off with my hand. “I already told them I was stopping all contact and I wouldn’t help them?—”
“General, twenty-five of them were taken by Lord Lyrason. That’s basically all of their core members, and he’s turning them out onto the street one by one—changed. They say it’s a warning. Retribution for the assassination attempt. But twenty-five. There’s going to be a lot of civilian casualties if we don’t do something.”
Twenty-five. Those idiots, I had always warned them they were going to get themselves killed. There was no way I was going to be able to save them. If I broke into Lord Lyrason’s manor with no evidence to free criminals, it could start a civil war. I had done what I could for them. I owed them nothing.
Twenty-five. I cursed under my breath. This wasn’t what I wanted. We needed two halfsouls. Twenty-five was going to be chaos.
I pinched the bridge of my nose as I considered. Should I pass this time? I knew it was foolish to get between Lord Lyrason and the Red Men when things had escalated so far. Who knew, if I stayed away, maybe Lord Lyrason would finally get caught without my intervention to clear up his mess? This much destruction wouldn’t stay hidden. But Sir Tristan was right. There were going to be a lot of casualties if we did nothing, and we’d been dispatching soulless and halfsouls for years while the city guard did nothing.
‘If you continue to interfere, I will have to kill you, your wife, and your friend.’
I was sure that note had been from Lord Lyrason. And a direct threat from him could only mean we were finally getting somewhere. I made him feel vulnerable. Sophie and Callum should be safe enough under guard in Kasomere, and hopefully, I would bring down Lord Lyrason before he could retaliate.
I had to be fast and finish this. If we went to Adenburg now, it would be to end this once and for all. We could capture two and kill the rest.
I rubbed my hand down my face. “Send four scouts now so we can locate the targets quickly. I’ll leave within the hour. We need to be subtle. I’ll ride with the main guard of ten. I want you to follow in an hour with ten more of the elite guard. Keep off the main road. Meet at the townhouse. If this mess is still going on tomorrow, organize for another ten soldiers to arrive in the morning and ten more in the afternoon. All should have two full sets of devices.”
He bowed. “I’ll arrange it at once.” He hesitated. “And if this takes more than two days? It sounds like Lord Lyrason is aiming for effect here, if he’s releasing them slowly.”
I sighed. “I hope to end this before then, but keep my men alert. If we fail to capture two to take as evidence in the first two nights, I’m due in Adenburg anyway. I’m going to be busy at the palace during the day, but we can still work at night. Thirty men should be enough to take shifts. Tell Sir Egbert to increase the soldiers’ training schedule while I’m away and add halfsoul training as well as the usual techniques against the soulless. I want both Sophie and Callum to have extra guards day and night.”
Sir Tristan bowed and left. I glanced out the window to see if I could spot Sophie in the gardens. What little time we had together was already being stolen from us. But it would only be nine or ten days in Adenburg, then I would make it up to her for leaving early.
Things were starting to work between us, and I would find time for us, whatever it took. I still couldn’t believe she might have genuine feelings for me.
I considered telling Sophie about Lord Lyrason’s note—since I was most definitely about to interfere with his affairs again—but pushed the thought aside. She needed to concentrate on her father, and I didn’t want to give her another thing to worry about, not when I was going to stop Lord Lyrason once and for all.
I grabbed my coat and attached all my spare reserves under my shirt, anticipation already making my blood hum.
Once I had the evidence against Lord Lyrason, I would find out what sort of a man my father was once and for all.
I arrivedin Highfair at dusk. Lord Lyrason’s halfsouls always appeared after nightfall, so the timing was perfect. We still had so many questions. What was he doing to turn them in the first place and why? Why release them into the city at all? And how did they get to the various downtown locations they showed up in?
If he was indeed going to release all the Red Men he had taken one at a time, maybe he would overextend himself and give something away.
According to the scouts, two had been released last night four hours apart, but one quickly died of its own accord. The second had been shot down by my soldiers after it killed a civilian. Tonight, one of my men already had two suspected sightings.
We rode through the darkness in unmarked, black clothes, scarves pulled over our noses and mouths to protect them from infected saliva. We hobbled the horses at a central point downtown. I ordered six of my men to go after the strongest halfsoul and try to capture him, and the other four to join the team of scouts combing the area. Lord Lyrason would likely release more tonight, and we needed to catch the halfsouls before they could hurt others and before they weakened. Otherwise, the sedative would kill them before we could transport them. Meanwhile, I would track down and dispatch the second halfsoul by myself. By the scouts’ accounts, it was already too weak for the sedative, but I would assess that myself.
On silent feet, I ran along streets lit by oil lamps, tracking the halfsoul with my detector. They used enough kryalcomy to make a keening sound on the detector, not unlike Kollenstar soulless. However, not enough that a yadum knife would kill them with one blow. Hence why my scouts preferred to distinguish them by inventing the term halfsouls.
My detector quickly directed me to my target: a dark shadow hunched between barrels in an empty, dirty street that stank of fish guts. If it weren’t for my device, I would have missed him completely. This was an ambush spot.
I approached cautiously, my sword in one hand, freisk knife in the other. The blow dart pipe stayed in my belt for now. I hadn’t got within five paces before the creature launched itself at me with a scream. My heart froze for a split second at the pale skin and gaping mouth, then my body responded automatically, dipping to one side and raising my sword to block its arms while I kicked the halfsoul in the chest. It staggered to keep its feet before flinging itself back at me. I ducked, sweeping a kick at its ankles and springing out the way as it fell on its back with a grunt.
Before it could scramble back to its feet, I grabbed a dart with the sedative and stabbed it into his arm. I waited until it stopped thrashing, my sword ready as its movements grew weaker and weaker. I cursed as I took in the extent of its haggard appearance. My scouts had been right; it wasn’t going to make it. The whine on my detector sputtered out as the creature fell limp. Dead. I stepped back and dropped my guard, running a hand down my face. At least there would be more to keep trying.
I stepped over the dead body and switched on my small kryalcomy lantern to see his face clearly. Even with the pale and distorted features, I recognized him. Jack Nettle. The young Red Man who’d been caught alongside Robert…who I had broken free. It looked like he hadn’t followed my advice to keep out of trouble.
I sighed into the rotting darkness before pulling the sedative needle free to dispose of it safely. I wiped my sword on Jack’s jacket. I couldn’t take responsibility for them all.
I lifted my hand to my device to issue a signal for scouts to come and retrieve the body, but before my fingers found the switch, I heard a faint keen on the detector suddenly snuff out. Had that been a faint signal from a distance halfsoul that had also met its end? I stayed still to see if the detector would pick up the signal again, instead I startled at the soft scuff of a boot. I froze and waited three heartbeats. There was no other sound, and my detector remained silent.
I stood slowly and readied my grip on my sword. “Who’s there?”
Silence except for the scurry of rats’ paws. But I knew what I had heard. “Show yourself.”
“Drop your weapons,” a woman’s voice commanded from behind.
I frowned and turned toward the noise, making out a shadowy figure as she became highlighted in yellow by the murky oil lamp that passed as a streetlight.
I tilted my head trying to identify her. “Not likely with this lot around.” I nodded to the corpse. “I’d rather stay alive.”
The woman took a purposeful step forward, her face shadowed by her dark grey hood and half covered with a scarf. She held a loaded crossbow aimed at my chest. I remembered the scout reporting the halfsoul slain by an unknown crossbow bolt. Had that been her?
She sounded confident and victorious. “I knew it was you. I knew you were behind this.”
It took me a moment to understand her accusation. I looked down at the dead body. “If you mean I am the one stopping these creatures from killing the local populace, then yes, you’re welcome. But it’s not me changing them. It’s Lord Lyrason.”
She scoffed. “Of course, you would say that. Everyone knows you two don’t get on.” Her accent was unusually refined. It looked like I wasn’t the only noble sneaking around at night.
I sighed and massaged my forehead, still watching her out of the corner of my eyes. “Why would I make them, let them onto the street, and then kill them where all could see?”
“You weren’t trying to kill it. You were trying to drug it—I assume to take it back to your estate. Lost control of it, did you?”
She motioned to the sheathed needle in my hand.
I put the needle and syringe back in their pouch in irritation. “As I said, Lord Lyrason created it. I’m trying to drug one to take to the Maegistrium and the king as evidence.”
“Oh really?” She took another step forward, not lowering the crossbow. “And why would Lord Lyrason let them loose for all to see?”
I hesitated. “This is one of the Red Men. I think these are a warning. They did try to assassinate him, after all.”
“And the others? Have they all been Red Men?”
I sighed in annoyance. “No.”
She leveled her crossbow up to my face, taking another step forward. “Everyone knows you do some sort of illegal kryalcomy, they just don’t know what. But this is too much of a coincidence for you to palm the blame off.”
I sighed and turned away from her, calling her bluff by exposing my back to her crossbow. “Look, I don’t have time to explain myself to strangers on the street. Believe what you will. Nobody cares about the truth anyway, unless they’re forced to confront it. Now go home before you get yourself killed.”
I started to walk away.
She spoke a little too fast, her casual control starting to slip. “Stop. I said stop right there.”
After a moment of clear indecision, she slung the crossbow across her back and ran to block my path, holding up a rapier instead. She held it inches from my chest. “You should come with me now and explain yourself properly. We can take the dead body.”
I shook my head. “You really think…” Something clicked in my mind. Her height. Her voice. I froze. “Princess Annabelle?”
Her surprised step back was all I needed for confirmation.
I stepped closer to her, ignoring her blade. “What in all the kingdoms do you think you are doing? There are crazed soulless out here—different than the ones from Kollenstar. These can turn civilians into soulless with a single bite.”
She pulled down her scarf. “I know. That’s why I’m here. You must stop this at once and come with me.”
I looked away, then back to her again. I wasn’t sure I had time for this right now. “Annabelle, Lord Lyrason released a couple a few hours apart last night and has already started releasing more tonight. My men are tracking a second one already. He’s taken the majority of the Red Men captive and is releasing them as these things. There could be up to twenty-five of them. You need to leave, and I need to stay and get rid of them before they hurt more people. I plan to sedate two, then I will bring the evidence to the king and Maegistrium. Dead bodies aren’t enough, you can barely tell anything from them. They don’t show how much they’ve been changed or that haemalcomy has been used to remove something integral from them. And maybe the king’s kryalchemists can find what it is that’s being drawn out of them, and why and where Lord Lyrason is storing it. There must be a bigger plan behind all of this.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. If you know it’s Lord Lyrason, then why haven’t you told the king already?”
I sighed. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation right now. “One, Lord Lyrason is powerful and popular, and the city guard will support whatever he says. It will require a lot of evidence to discredit him. I didn’t have enough evidence that would hold when nobody else seems to have witnessed a single thing. That’s why I’m trying to sedate them. Two, I…I was worried the king might be part of it. Or allowing it in some way. He knows Lord Lyrason does at least some illegal kryalcomy and does nothing. It has made me cautious until I could show him how bad this really was by publicly presenting him with one of these creatures.”
Her face tightened. “Many of the lords engage in some degree of mildly illegal kryalcomy. But how dare you suspect the king of allowing something as evil as this.” She pointed to the corpse.
I scoffed. “Oh, he’s done far worse.”
Her eyes darkened in anger.
I took another step forward, forcing her to move her rapier away from my chest. “As I said, I hope he has nothing to do with this. Why don’t you investigate him, since this seems to be your new hobby?” She shifted, and I noticed something in her hand, mostly concealed by the folds of her cloak. “What’s that?”
Before she could protest, I grabbed it and spun away from her.
“Give that back!” Her hand reached out but only grasped air as I kept my back between her and the object.
I took out my small kryalcomy lamp and examined the object in the pale blue light. It was a pyramidal device only slightly smaller than the one the Red Man had stolen from Lord Lyrason and used to track Sophie. Sure enough, the hare was embossed on one side. This explained the faint keening noise on my detector that had abruptly silenced. She must have only turned it off minutes ago.
I scoffed in disgust. “So you’re working with him too? Or do you just happen to be using illegal kryalcomy while blaming me for doing the same?”
She snatched it back with a glare, a golden strand of hair falling free from her hood. “It was a present.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, really…wait, have you been tracking me?”
“How else would I be here?” She looked down, and her cheeks heated. “Well, I knew you were doing illegal kryalcomy, and I’d heard reports of random civilian deaths downtown through my information network. They always coincided with your return to Adenburg. So, I decided to investigate.”
I threw up my hands. “This is dangerous, Annabelle! And you shouldn’t be using Lord Lyrason’s kryalcomy. How did you set it to track me anyway?”
She pushed her hair back under her hood. “Well, when Lord Lyrason thought he was about to be engaged to me, he boasted about this device. It seemed harmless. I’m sure the Maegistrium will allow it soon enough.” She straightened her back in defiance. “I asked him for one as a symbol of his interest. He made me promise not to give it to anyone else. He didn’t want anyone stealing his ideas or giving it to the Maegistrium before it was made legal. Anyway, to set it to track, you can get your target to touch the center, or place a part of their body there. Like a hair or fingernail. I took one of your hairs from your coat at my engagement ball. The one you gave the servants to hang up.” She pocketed the device. “And I was right. People die every time you sneak back here, always at night.”
“Annabelle, you’re being a fool and missing what’s right in front of your eyes.” She glared at me, and I returned a hard stare of my own. “It’s not normal kryalcomy. Think about it. It’s using body parts. That’s closer to haemalcomy. That will never be allowed by the Maegistrium. It’s not ‘mildly illegal’ as you put it nor is it ethical.”
She looked at the pyramid and chewed her lip. “Convince me, and I’ll help you. But if I prove it’s you, I will arrest you.”
I sighed and pushed back my hair. “No. It’s too dangerous. If one of them bites you, there’s no cure.”
She squared her shoulders. “I can fight.”
I tilted my head. “You can spar. You’ll get yourself killed.”
She met my gaze without an ounce of fear. “Prove it to me, and I’ll argue your case to the king. You know we’re close. He always listens to me.”
I shifted, uneasy. “It may damage your relationship with him. You will have to be resolute.”
She scowled. “He’s a good man. If Lord Lyrason is causing these soulless, then Father is ignorant, not complicit, and he will want to end this.”
I shrugged. “He’s not a good man. But I certainly hope he’s better than this.” I gestured at the body. “I guess I’m about to find out.”
The gleam in her eyes turned cruel. “Just because he never fully acknowledged you as?—”
A stone clicked. I clamped my hand down over her mouth, and she squealed in protest. “Be quiet. There’s somebody coming.”
We’d been too loud, and we’d lingered too long. I shouldn’t have let her distract me. A soft whine was rapidly growing on my detector.
“Annabelle, one is coming. Get on that rooftop. If you get a clear shot with your crossbow, shoot it. Especially if you have yadum tipped arrows, but any arrow would do.”
To my surprise, she nodded without an argument and pulled her scarf back over her face before scrambling up a decaying garden wall and leaping up to the roof. What books had she been reading to give her the wild idea to style herself as some sort of vigilante?
The whine grew louder. It was coming at full speed, possibly attracted by our argument in the otherwise quiet night.
I readied my weapons in a defensive stance and scanned the street in both directions. Though detectors were directional enough to track, if your quarry was at close quarters and moving too quickly, they didn’t always point you in the right direction. I rolled the dead body of Jack to the side of the street with my foot. I didn’t want it to trip me.
The high-pitched drone turned into an audible scream, and a woman appeared, running down the street at full speed, her long, thin limbs so white they seemed skeletal. Her ragged dress barely covered the essentials. She skidded and slipped on bare feet over the slick cobblestones but didn’t seem to register any pain or tiredness. In that sense, the halfsouls were exactly like the Kollenstar soulless.
I dug in my heels, drew in a small amount of strength from my reserve, and prepared to deflect her momentum, pushing her into the wall. If I was quick, I might be able to stab her before she recovered.
There was a thwip and a thud, and the woman flew backward, a crossbow bolt in her chest. She thrashed, attempting to get back up to her feet. With an injury like that, she wouldn’t be a suitable one to sedate. I ran toward her and finished her with a clean blow before she managed to stand.
I looked up at Annabelle without bothering to hide my surprise.
“Who, by the kingdoms, taught you to shoot like that? Most trained soldiers wouldn’t have hit a target moving that fast from your angle.”
I watched in the dim light as she slung her crossbow over her back and dropped beside me like a cat. She practically preened. “Still think I shouldn’t be here?”
I sheathed my sword and folded my arms. “Well, yes, actually. It’s still too dangerous. You realize that if you die it will affect all of Fenland? Does anyone at the palace even know you’re not in bed?”
She scoffed. “A ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”
I narrowed my eyes as she moved closer to inspect the body, then clearly thought better of it and stepped back, pressing a hand on the scarf over her mouth. I gave the signal through the detector for a scout to retrieve the body: three short low drones.
I stepped beside my half sister. “Are you more convinced now? Why would I make things that actively try to kill me?”
She pursed her lips as she nudged the body with one toe as if that was a reliable way to tell if something was dead. “Maybe you’re correcting your mistakes.”
“Ergh!” I shook my shoulders to dismiss her and started toward the center of downtown ready to hunt the next one.
Annabelle ran to catch up. “I’m coming too. You can’t stop me.”
I threw her a sideways look. “Just don’t die. Please. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
She snorted. “Then do your job as a general and kill things. Isn’t that what we basically pay you to do?”
“I’m trying to sedate two, remember? It will be more risky.” I sighed. “You said you would argue my case to the king. I will accept that, but I don’t need help sedating one. Stay back,” I scowled and looked away. She kept following.
She was annoying. But she had a point. She had a much better chance of convincing Father to move against Lord Lyrason. He doted on her. If she witnessed me sedating it, too, it would make her case stronger.
I thought again of Lyrason’s kryalcomy on his desk and wished I understood what it meant. If Annabelle could have a piece of illegal kryalcomy and not be complicit, he could too. I had overreacted to my worries.
It would be nice if my father had at least one redeeming quality.