Oathbreaker ch 9.31 - City of the Falcon (Patreon)

Bradivara lies far to the north of the Oroion Sea, beyond the Ilcaerni Mountains and the banshee-haunted forest known as the Forsenvines. It was a mighty nation in olden days, fallen into decline then risen again during the Crusades, when it became the forward speartip of Aureate expansion across the elder kingdoms. That era had ended as well, with the coming of the dragon and then the angel who’d slain it. That same celestial warrior had then made accord with the city-states of the inland sea, and together they rebuked the Urnic emperors.

One might consider it strange, when one knows that the divinity the theocracy rallied behind was brethren to the Choir of Heavensreach. But then one might recall that the God-Queen had been more than two centuries departed from these shores when the first armies were launched from the subcontinent, and then one might wonder at many other things.

Forgive me. It is so in my nature to sow doubt that I do it almost as a reflex. Do not dwell on it, and let us continue.

It is a vast country, its borders spread across a sweeping plain beyond the northern face of the mountains. It is the beating heartland of the Kosmark, and once it was a breadbasket for the Oroion Empire, as well as a great breeding ground for the ancient destrier. But then the dragon came, and old Bradivara died. More than half of its former glory, even centuries on, lay barren and haunted by wyrmblighted things, a dreary bog called Wyvernmurk.

But the nation’s populace is hardy, having weathered many troubles, and decade by decade, generation by generation, they have fought to reclaim their country. They fight back the Murk, as it’s colloquially called, as much with careful agriculture as with the blade.

The fortress that stands at the edge of that desolation is the city of Harkres.

Old and noble Harkres. Ah, I’d love to tell you more of it, mortal. Though I was not there long, I think of the city and the country fondly. The first thing that should be mentioned, and most will mention, is that it is a picturesque place. Beautiful, if you want to use that word. The city rests on a vast plain, an outcrop of the great steppe which sprawls across much of northern Edaea. Here it guards over a major crossing of the Kosvein River, which once buffeted Oroion expansion into the north and which now empties into the wetlands, a shadow of its former glory.

But it runs fast and clean through the plain still, and on clear days shines silver over golden fields, fed by tributaries from the north and south. This river gives life to the Bradivaran basin. There are high, rocky hills scattered across the plain, believed in local tradition to be the cairns of angels fallen from Old Heaven during an ancient war. To the east lie the boglands, where the terrain dips lower. Even on a clear day, a gloom seems to hang over those lands.

The city’s walls are high white stone that blaze in the northern sun, and the High Cathedral of Harkres can be seen even from a great distance on a clear day, like a burning beacon shining atop the golden sea of the plain.

I should have hated it, for it is a symbol of mortal defiance against a monstrous world and its people are as resilient against predators as they are pious. But they are also lovers of fine silks and fine animals, and I have enjoyed many works of philosophy from the country’s scribe-priests. They bind some of the most beautiful works of scripture, and even though the golden thread of those books scalds my fingers and the sacred parables within make me ill to read, I have read them.

I am fond of Harkresian poetry. It is often tragic and tends to involve romance. There was a favorite work of mine that I kept in my rooms at the Campanile, a set of lays telling the story of a Bradivaran knight during the Aureate Crusades, and his lover, a sorceress who lived inside a tower inside a mirror. They quested into the court of the Cambion in Shadowed Antriss to win back the sorceress’s soul.

It ended badly for both of them, of course. It remains one of my comfort reads.

I traveled to the city by mortal means, taking a caravan from Thorndell Gate through the mountains. It took many weeks, and while slow, I did not mind it. I’d lived slowly for some time, and it gave me the chance to gather news and envelop myself in the right persona. I could not teleport directly into the country, knowing that Didikas had already tried. Some power blocked transposition in the region.

The rugged wagon paths and mountain roads eventually dipped into gentler plains, and the roads became more constant and better traveled. The group grew as other travelers joined it. The caravan I’d originally joined was filled with merchants carrying goods from the sea, but soon pilgrims began to mingle with us and eventually overtook the convoy’s number. They came from a wide menagerie of lands, and soon the convoy filled with the chatter of a dozen languages.

I spoke with a young mother one night while we camped on the plains and learned something of their interest in the country.

“My husband went to the city ahead of us a year ago,” she told me in heavily accented trade-common as she shushed her youngest to sleep. The fire crackled between us, and conversation drifted through the night from the other camps. The woman had three children, a baby girl and twin boys, and they’d all gone to sleep around her, using her as a pillow.

“You’re from the Marchlands?” I asked, noting the accent.

She nodded. “We used to live in Ukkerholn. We wanted to get out before the war got that far north.”

She referred to the civil war in the Bant. It was the largest country in the Auroran Marches, a buffer of lands dividing the Kosmark and Urn. Its territories were being united under the flag of their new republic, an uprising against that countries lords, and revolution had become expansion. I’d heard rumors, seen the refugees even in Ember.

“And what made you consider Harkres?” I asked.

The Bant woman let out an embarrassed laugh, adjusting her position to better support the little girl in her arms. “We’re pilgrims. I suppose I don’t have the look?”

Though worn, her clothes and bearing spoke of wealth. When I didn’t comment, she continued in a softer voice. “My husband was a priest — is a priest. The revolutionaries don’t like the Golden Church, so it was either head west or east, and we heard there was a house war in the subcontinent, so…” She shrugged. “My husband thought we could fair better in Bradivara. He was head scribe for our count, and the Curia will surely have need of learned men. Or so my husband says.”

Interested, I leaned forward. “Doesn’t the Curia have its own god?”

The woman smiled indulgently. “Yes. I’ve heard they have strange beliefs. I suppose I’ll have to learn new prayers.” At my look, her face fell. “You think me faithless, don’t you? Turning from Aureate to Argenite just like that.”

As a shapeshifter myself, I felt little condemnation. Because I was a demon, I could tell she looked for it in me, wanted someone to repudiate her.

I’d long stopped believing in coincidence. Did the natural order of the cosmos want me to play the devil to this wayward soul, to fill her head with doubts and punish her ambivalence? I could do it. Fit myself into the machine. Perhaps I’d find a measure of purpose that way.

Instead I said, “We all wear what skins we need to survive. I won’t curse you for choosing them over a god.”

When I nodded to the sleeping children, the woman’s face changed. I thought for a moment she might start weeping. She mastered herself, sniffed, and thanked me.

“Do you have any?” She asked, and nodded to her children.

I considered my answer a while. Ghosts in my memory flexed their claws. A crater smoked on a mountainside.

“I had a daughter.” After a pause I added, “I made her hate me.”

“I’m sorry,” the young mother said, and sounded like she meant it. She glanced down at the baby in her arms, shifted her position carefully so as not to jostle the two boys in her lap. “Would you like to hold her?”

I did, but because jealousy for the woman had grown in me through our conversation, and because there are few things sweeter than innocent blood, I didn’t trust myself. “Thank you, but it’s best we don’t disturb them. This is fine.”

The family made for a picturesque sight, huddled by the campfire, the tired mother with downcast eyes and her children snoring softly against her skirts. A scene so sweet it left the taste of bile on my tongue.

“You should rest,” I told the woman. “I’ll keep up a while, tend to the fire.”

She was already nodding off. I watched hungrily, toying with the idea of walking through their dreams.

I didn’t. I guarded them against the dangers of the night, and wondered.

We arrived at the city in time to witness an execution.

The caravan of merchants and pilgrims were allowed through the city’s prime gate without incident. The Pious Gate, it was called, I think because it faced the east or some drivel of that sort. High walls of white limestone ringed those gates, and round towers hung with banners bearing the symbol of the Harkresian Guard, an argent falcon with its wings outspread, its talons clutching the haft of a burning spear.

Harkres had no king or duke, but was rather governed by a military officer known as the knight-regent, a holdover title from when the crusades ruled the country. The knight-regent answered directly to the archcurate, the leading official in the High Cathedral, who was also traditionally the oracle and representative for the local deity.

I’d taken a special interest in the command structure of the city and the Curia during my preparations. This is how I was aware that the archcurate in the High Cathedral was my target, for that must be Ammatán, though he did not use that name here and there were still gaps in my knowledge of how he came into such a position of power so quickly.

There were technically two cults I needed to infiltrate, that being the existing worshippers of the Falcon, and the dupes of the demon who’d supplanted it and infested the Harkresian clergy. It would require caution and finesse. One slip, and my quarry would sense my presence.

I already had a plan in mind, but getting a lay of the land would be the first step.

Almost as though to mock my ambivalent thoughts on coincidences, I ended up entering the city with the Bant woman and her family. She flashed me a nervous smile, which I returned to be polite. She had her baby swaddled in cloth in her arms and her two boys tied to her by rope. Smart woman.

The area beyond the Pious Gate was a large market square. It was occupied by hundreds of people even before our convoy added its own count. A ring of soldiers kept the crowds at bay, who filled the air with their angry shouts and chatter. In the center of the square, a scaffold had been constructed atop the white-yellow cobblestone. Ringed by guards, five men and one woman had been bound up to posts. A man in black robes embroidered in silver addressed the crowd.

I heard a gasp to my left, and glanced that way to see my new friend.

“That’s Egon,” she said, needing to raise her voice over the shouting crowd. “He’s my husband’s porter!”

I searched the faces of the condemned. We were near the back of the crowd, and the square was expansive, and my vision in daytime wasn’t the best. Most of the men looked to be of venerable age, and they didn’t have the physiques of laborers or soldiers. Their long beards and shaved heads told me they were most likely monks of the Curia, though they wore the rags of prisoners. The lone woman in the group wore a stained dress that had once been a striking saffron, and about her waist were two entwined ribbons of red and white. Because my research was thorough, and because I’d lived through the era when the marker became law across much of the north, I knew her to be a prostitute. Or, at the very least, the local municipality wanted the crowd to think so.

But one stood out from the rest, a man in his late twenties with a heavy beard and heavy arms. While the old monks looked despondent and the woman was weeping, that last man glared out at the crowd with open contempt.

“Do you see your husband?” I asked the woman.

She searched, her eyes fearful and desperate. “No. Do you think he’s…”

Her words were cut off as a flash illuminated the scaffold, and suddenly all six of the condemned were engulfed in a bright white flame. It happened so suddenly and with such violence that the doomed souls didn’t even have time to scream as they burned. Many in the crowd, mostly newcomers like us, let out cries of shock and horror. I noted that the locals only cheered louder, and the argenite priest lifted his arms high in exultation.

The Bant woman put a hand to her mouth. Her sons were spared the sight by merit of their size and the crowd, but she averted her eyes from those six plumes of silver that had, moments before, been people. I only narrowed mine, not out of horror but in concentration as I let my true nature bleed out just a little.

It was dangerous in open daylight. While I did not have a vampire’s particular weakness to sunlight, I still abhorred its touch and was weakened by it. My human shape was a protective suit my true self hid inside of, a cloak against a world that tolerated my presence only with resentment. Listening wasn’t much of a risk, however.

It proved little use. I gained scraps of information, and was already forming a theory about what we’d just witnessed, but there was too much noise and light for me to focus properly.

I did catch a few focused thoughts from those nearest, which was how I knew the Bant woman was already doomed. Some had heard what she’d said about the porter and were giving us sidelong looks. She was so focused on the scaffold that she didn’t notice. Her boys were asking what was happening and the baby had begun to fuss.

I would like to say that I made my next choice out of some form of camaraderie for our conversation out on the plains, but it would be a lie. I adapted my scheme in a moment, and made that migrant family part of it.

I took the woman’s hand. She shivered from fear, or perhaps just from the coldness of my touch.

“We should get you away from this crowd,” I told her. “Say nothing else of your husband.”

She stared at me in dull shock. It was lucky we hadn’t been thoroughly interviewed on entry to the city. Pilgrims were being allowed in almost without challenge, a curiosity in itself. Whether her conversion to the Curia was genuine or not, the woman’s little joke the previous night had shielded her from suspicion.

But her cloth was fine, if weathered by half a continent of travel, and hardly gave her the look of the typical religious wayfarer. It would be best to get away from this scene.

I tugged her and her family along, mutating my plans on the fly. There were many guards about, all of them attentively watching the crowd as though to spot anyone who showed more than the normal amount of horror at the scene on the scaffold. Searching for collaborators.

And several people had heard the Bant woman recognize the porter.

“Say nothing and keep your eyes down,” I told her. “You as well, little ones.”

I addressed the last to her sons. Identical twins, they were both seven or eight, old enough to know they should be afraid. One tugged at his mother’s skirts and asked where his father was, and she hushed him.

“Where are we going?” The Bant woman asked. Her fear had given way to suspicion. We’d only spoken once, and briefly, and I was little more than a stranger to her. We’d not even exchanged names.

“I’m trying to save your life,” I told her. “Now be silent and obey.”

She stiffened, and I got the immediate sense that — whoever she’d been — she was not used to being ordered. Before she could protest further, we were stopped by a pair of soldiers at the edge of the square.

“Hold a moment,” the younger of the two drawled in Bradivaran. He was well armed, with a breastplate of white steel and gauntlets edged in silver. Bradivaran metalwork was world renowned, and I saw evidence of why on that sentry. His peaked helm had a complex and ridged design, with a short bill over his brow. His left pauldron had been fashioned into the shape of a falcon’s wing.

“Ser?” I turned my head down respectfully, letting go of the Bant woman’s hand to fold my own in front of my body, presenting as little potential for threat as possible.

“Everyone’s to remain in the square until the traitors burn out,” the young soldier said without any particular emotion. “Knight-Regent’s orders.”

My guess that they were searching for collaborators had merit, it seemed. The man’s eyes slid past, not really seeing us. A bored young officer disgruntled at a tedious duty. His companion was a few years older and of more common stock. He noticed me.

I wasn’t exactly primmed for seduction. I hadn’t had a proper wash in weeks of travel, and I wore the same clothes as when I’d departed Ember, having left my Campanile robes behind in favor of garments in a typical style for free women of the western inland sea region. My ankle-length tunic was dyed ochre, worn in a halter style and sleeveless, suited for the warm climate. I’d chosen it because I could make it revealing or modest with some small adjustments, and because it was an echo of the fashions I’d favored in Agharra.

It also marked me as a foreigner as much as the Bant woman’s marchlander dress did. The guards took note of this.

“Please, ser.” I spoke softly, almost too low to be heard over the crowd. “The children.”

The officer shrugged. “What about them?”

I didn’t think telling him that the day’s entertainment wasn’t exactly child friendly would carry much interest. He had the attitude of someone who found everything annoying or tedious, even the concerns of mothers who didn’t want to watch people be burned alive. The second guard looked a touch more sympathetic, though.

“Where do you lot hail from?” That second man asked us, his gaze running across the small family but lingering on me. “She looks like an easterner. You her servant, girl?”

Along with my clothes, I’d also altered the shape I’d worn in Ember. I was young and lean again, and I’d adopted a more rustic cadence to my speech. It was the same accent used by many who lived along the western coastlands of the Oroion and in the lands around the Cairn Sea. It was, in truth, my most familiar mortal dialect, for I’d haunted those regions for the great majority of my time in the mortal coil. Those lands had birthed the Oroion Empire, and my assumed accent would have once been common across much of the known world, even considered noble.

Less so these days.

I hesitated, as though I was embarrassed by the soldier’s attention, and tilted my chin down to look through my eyelashes without ever breaking eye contact with the older guard. He wasn’t so old, in truth, perhaps a year or three shy of thirty. “They lost their home in the war in Bant. She doesn’t speak Bradivaran, ser.”

“Answer his question, oroi,” the officer said. He used the demonym like a slur. It often was used that way.

The Bant woman said something behind me in her own tongue. It helped sell my story, and I felt a rush of approval towards her, though I kept my attention on the guards.

“She hired me during her journey to act as a guide and translator,” I explained. “I know many tongues.”

“Another fucking road witch,” the officer spat. “As if we’re not infested enough already. You take her last coin for your help, oroi?”

I realized then that I’d been a shut-in for far too long. The Oroion Empire didn’t rule the world anymore, and the peoples from the hinterlands west and south of the inland sea were commonly labeled as pirates, heretics, charlatans, and worse. After all, they lived in haunted lands beyond a haunted sea, in regions still shadowed by Antriss. And Harkres, though it payed homage to its own patron deity, was still a product of the world the God-Queen had made. While born of a schism from the greater faith, it still held relations to it.

And I mimicked the clothes and accent of the remnants of a cursed empire cast into darkness by the world’s mightiest god. The Witching Coasts, other nations called the country beyond Ember and the other pockets of civilization in the south. Assuming me to be the Bant woman’s servant was one of the kinder stereotypes they might have levied. In certain parts of the world, they could have said witch or devil and people would have believed it.

I didn’t assume this persona without purpose. That purpose lay in the second, older guard’s interest. I was already in his head, in his thoughts, so I knew that he saw me as something exotic.

“Please ser,” I said again, repeating myself and playing that I didn’t understand their language perfectly. “Just let the children through. It’s not good for them to see.”

I gestured to the scene in the square. The officer scoffed, but his companion was nodding in distracted agreement. He’d already become smitten.

“Isn’t no harm in it,” he said to the young officer.

“Knight-Regent might think so,” the officer said, then shook his head. “Your master a merchant, oroi? She looks like a merchant’s wife. Where’s her husband?”

“She’s a pilgrim,” I said. “Her husband is already in the city. She’s supposed to meet him.”

They asked me where, and I translated to the Bant. We didn’t have to fake it, for it turned out her Bradivaran was truly quite poor. She gave me the name of an inn. She had a letter, which she showed to the guards.

“Upscale place,” the officer noted with raised eyebrows. “Refugee from the revolution, is it? She looks the type. Well, you’ll learn to say our prayers proper soon enough, pilgrim.” He chuckled, but shrugged and waved a hand. “Fine, move on.”

He stepped back to let us move on and permitted his companion give quick directions to the inn mentioned in the woman’s letter. The older guard grabbed my arm as I moved to follow the family. The grip was possessive, even a touch desperate.

“I’m Tarik,” he breathed. “I’m at the Iron Feather most nights. If you can find time away from your mistress…”

He let me go then, but his eyes remained on me until we turned at the end of the street.

Harkres’s whole population couldn’t have fit into that square, and the streets were crowded and noisy. There were beggars everywhere, many of whom were refugees just like my new friend, but without rich husbands to greet them. The buildings represented a number of styles, some of them ancient and others built during the Crusades with eastern sensibilites, giving the place a timeless quality. There were many temples and churches, many devoted to the Argent Falcon, but some given over to other God-Saints respected by the Harkresians. The markets were bustling hives of activity, gorged on products from across the northern world.

Bradivarans, similar to the peoples of the inland sea, also had fairly liberal sensitivities in regard to privacy and gender separation. There were public baths where men and women mingled, often in the nude. The Bant woman was scandalized.

We had to stop when we came on the sight of an elephant, and the children became excited. Their mother allowed them to ogle from a distance, I think only because she was still reeling from what happened in the square and needed a moment to collect herself.

It wasn’t a real elephant. Those had gone extinct even before the horse had, thanks to the reckless experiments of Agharran alchemists during the Chimera Wars. I believe this specimen was known as an umrophant. It had a shorter snout than the beasts in my memory, more like a giant ant-eater, was covered in white fur, and towered high as some of the houses. The children were enamored.

“I’ve thought through what just happened,” the woman said after a few minutes. We stood at the side of the street and watched the crowds go by. “I think you just saved my life. I was an idiot, calling out like that.”

She glanced at me and said, “I don’t even know your name.”

I almost said Ekasne, out of habit, but shook my head and told her, “Shy.”

“Margret.” She smiled tiredly. “Why did you help us?”

Because your husband is obviously involved in something, and I plan to use you. That wouldn’t be prudent to say, so I just shrugged. “Seemed the thing to do. You sure you’re not put out accepting help from an oroi?”

“…There are rumors in my country,” she admitted. “My brothers used to say that your people would curse anyone who met their eyes. They were idiots, but I half believed them. I think they half believed it too. But I’ve been getting strange looks for the last four hundred miles, so who am I to be prudish? Would it be terribly rude to ask if you expect payment?”

I laughed softly. “You will pay me.” When she stiffened I said, “I want to meet your priest.”

She was quiet a long moment while her boys chattered to one another in Bant. The baby began to fuss, and she took a moment to shush her. “I’m not even sure he’s alive. I—”

“He’s alive,” I said. When her gaze shot to me, I explained. “I had you show that letter and give his name to those two guards, remember? They didn’t seem bothered about it.”

Her face worked as she tried to decide how angry to be. “You used me as bait!”

“And now you know your husband hasn’t been taken and tortured by the local watch,” I said coolly. “If they had his name and the inn he was staying at, then those two back there would have immediately recognized it. They were obviously on the lookout for co-conspirators. It was best to know, don’t you think?”

She’d decided to be angry. “My children were with me. If we’d been taken right there…”

“It would have been the same as any other time or place,” I shot back. “Listen, Margret; You’ve come to this country during a very dangerous time. The Curia is not what you think, and I believe your husband either knew that before he came here or he’s discovered it since his arrival. Maybe that man up on the scaffold acted on his own or was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know. I plan to get that story, and do what I can to protect you, but you’re going to have to heed me.”

Margret just shook her head. “Who are you?”

She probably believed she’d gotten caught up with a spy working on behalf of some foreign government, which was true enough. I’d refrained from intruding in her thoughts, mostly because I still felt that touch of desire to be her from our talk on the plains, and wasn’t sure I’d stop at mindreading.

I refused to answer the question. “You shouldn’t go to that inn. Even if the regular guards don’t know the same name you do, it doesn’t mean they aren’t looking for your husband. He might be in hiding, or the place he’s staying watched. Let me see that letter?”

She complied, and I read it quickly. Her priest wanted Margret to take room at the inn and give his name to the keeper, who would get a message to him. Simple enough, if they were both in the city and nothing had gone terribly amiss.

“I don’t even have enough money to house and feed us more than a few days,” Margret admitted. “The journey was… hard. I had a wagon and mules when we left the Marches.”

“I’d advise you to take a different inn for now.” I tucked the letter into my tunic, drawing an angry glare from the woman. “Tell no one any of this. You came to the city alone, and you’re looking for work.”

“And what will you do?” She asked me.

Terrible things. Aloud I said, “I’ll just ask a few questions.”