Focus, Isoka. I draw a slow breath, let it out, pushing back against the fear. Whatever those things were up above, they’re not down in the pit with me. I look around at my new companions. The girl who freed me wears a strange outfit, a long green dress in a style I’ve never seen, with asymmetric silver bands around her arms. She’s not an Imperial—by her skin, I’d guess she was from the Southern Kingdoms, about which I know almost nothing. What she’s doing in Kahnzoka harbor I have no idea.
Behind her, in the corner of the room, a large young man in rough leather stands in front of a girl in a kizen. The girl is younger than me. The boy has a fresh bruise on his forehead and a split lip. He looks like a low-ward brawler, a type with which I’m intimately familiar. He’s sizing me up the same as I’m doing to him, and when our eyes meet, he bristles, like a dog’s hackles rising.
Another young woman in the next corner, huddled in on herself. Her cheap, colorful wrap and gaudy makeup mark her as a streetwalker, one of the lowest rungs on the city’s tawdry ladder of prostitution. Her garments are torn, and her makeup is smudged with blood where she’s been beaten. Completing the group, in the last corner, is a scrawny boy with flyaway hair and threadbare clothes. He looks on the edge of panic.
Not a dangerous group, I assess. The southerner is an unknown, and the brawler could try something. The other three don’t seem like a threat. Then I remember Naga telling me that they only send mage-born to the ship, and change my mind. If these are the latest sacrifices, which seems likely, then they can all touch the Wells. Which means I can’t afford to ignore any of them.
I raise my hands, and attempt a smile. My heart is still beating hard against my ribs.
“Hello.” Because, really, what in the Rot do you say at a time like this?
The brawler cuts me off, stepping forward and pointing with one hand, the girl clinging to the other.
“Are you the one who brought us here?” He has a thick low-ward accent. “Where in the stinking Rot are we? What do you want with us?”
“I didn’t bring you here,” I tell him. “I just—”
“Don’t rotting lie to me!” he roars.
“She came down in the cage,” the southerner says, her voice very soft but distinct. She speaks fluent Imperial with a lilting accent. “I think she was brought here like the rest of us.”
“Then—” the young man begins. He’s interrupted when the cage rises again, the screech and rattle of its mechanism drowning all speech. It passes upward, out of sight. A lantern appears, high overhead, and then several more. I can see the square room we’re in has walls about fifteen feet high and above that is a metal catwalk with a railing. There are people up there, dozens of them, but the lanterns are aimed down at us, so they’re nothing but faceless shadows. I hear laughter and shouting I can’t understand.
The streetwalker starts to cry. I turn in a circle, shielding my eyes against the lights. There’s something that looks like a ladder, hanging from the catwalk, but not quite low enough to grab with a running jump. I glance at the brawler, thinking that I might be able to make it if I stood on his shoulders, but that’s as far as my plan gets.
Someone jumps from the catwalk. He falls fast, and then magic crackles and flares around him, the pale blue of Tartak, the Well of Force. It halts him in midair a few inches off the ground, and then he drops lightly onto his toes.
He has the copper skin and dark, curly hair of a Jyashtani, with high, sharp cheeks and shockingly blue eyes. I guess he’s a few years older than me, perhaps twenty, with an athlete’s build. His costume is outlandish, even by foreign standards. Jyashtani traders in the market usually wear loose white robes with tight black skullcaps, but this young man has cream-colored silk trousers embroidered with a blue-and-green design, a broad red sash at his waist, tied in an elaborate knot on his hip, and a dark shirt that doesn’t fit, half-exposing one shoulder. There’s a sword at his belt, a straight-bladed Jyashtani weapon. His hair hangs loose, longer than any Imperial man would wear it, brushing the nape of his neck.
“Greetings,” he says. His Imperial is good, but not perfect, with the classic Jyashtani rasp. “Welcome to Soliton. My name is Zarun. I’m going to explain a few facts to you, so pay attention. You’ll be here the rest of your lives.”
5
Zarun looks at me first, then at each of the others in turn. I wonder if he’s assessing them for danger like I did. Certainly he doesn’t show any fear. His lips are slightly quirked, as though he finds us vaguely amusing.
“Where in the name of the Blessed is Soliton?” the brawler says.
“Soliton is a ship, not a place,” Zarun says, turning to face him. “And you are all now part of its crew. The Captain is in command, and the officers, including me, carry out his orders. You, in turn, carry out ours.” His smile broadens. “Is that understood?”
“To the Rot with that.” The brawler steps forward, shaking off the grip of the girl behind him. “You’re going to let us off right now.”
“Oh, I don’t advise trying that,” Zarun says. “You saw the things at the rail when you were brought on board? We call them angels, and they serve the Captain. They take a dim view of crew trying to leave.”
My skin goes cold. Were those twisted things alive? I remember the gray ripples of magic, the voices, and shiver involuntarily.
“I’m not asking again,” the brawler says. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, here.”
He holds out a hand, and fire shoots up from his palm in a twisting column. Myrkai, the Well of Fire. I’d seen touched doing conjurors’ tricks in the market, but nothing like this, and I have to work to keep my own power in check.
“Your Captain isn’t here right now, is he?” the brawler says, the fire lighting his face. “So either you let us off, or I—”
Zarun moves fast, almost too fast to see. Bands of pale blue energy whip toward the brawler. The magic grabs both of the boy’s hands, solidifying into glowing manacles of solid force that yank his arms up and apart. Power flares on Zarun’s right arm, and I feel a sympathetic tug in my chest. Green Melos energy bursts out, forming a long blade like my own. In a single smooth motion, Zarun steps up to the brawler and slams the Melos blade into his chest, green lightning crackling from the impact.
For a moment, no one moves. The brawler’s eyes have gone very wide, and the fire in his hand fades to embers and disappears. He tries to breathe, coughs, and spits blood. Zarun steps back and the Tartak fetters disappear. The brawler collapses like a broken puppet.
The girl behind him screams and runs to his side. I throw a quick glance around the room; the streetwalker is hiding her face, and the skinny boy is on his knees, his trousers damp with piss. The southern girl is staring at the spreading pool of blood as though it is the only thing in the world, her wide eyes very white in her dark face.
“Duro,” the brawler’s girl wails. “Duro!” I didn’t get a good look at her earlier, but she can’t be more than thirteen. Her kizen is soaking up blood.
“I’m sorry.” Zarun looks down at her, still smiling. “There’s always one who needs a demonstration.”
“You…” The girl looks back at him, face twisted with rage and loss.
“He was your lover?” Zarun says, cocking his head.
“He’s my brother,” she spits at him. “I’m going to kill you, you rotscum, you filthy—”
“I see,” Zarun says. “And is there anything I can do to change your mind on that subject?”
The girl’s eyes are full of fury. She thinks she’s being mocked. “I will; I swear it!”
“I believe you.”
He spins, blade hand extended, then straightens up. There’s a thump as the girl’s severed head hits the wall. Her body collapses on top of her brother’s, her blood pumping across him.
The southern girl gives a little shriek, and the others all look away from the carnage. I catch Zarun looking at me, and realize I was the only one who didn’t flinch.
“This is a good lesson,” Zarun says, in a thoughtful tone. “Here on Soliton, we mean what we say. If you tell someone you’re going to kill them, be prepared for them to take it seriously.” He lets the Melos blade fade away, and barks some foreign words into the darkness above us. Ropes fall, dark shapes swarming down them. “Bind them and take them to the Butcher!”
* * *