Oathbreaker ch 9.32 - Nightfall Over Harkres (Patreon)

I waited until the cover of darkness, then returned to the square. There were guards on the walls and patrols about, but they were easy enough to avoid.

This, if anything, was a sign of something amiss. Harkres was a fortress city blessed by angels, long renowned as the speartip aimed squarely at the breastbone of the shadowed west. I should have had a very difficult time infiltrating it.

With this in mind, I proceeded with daring caution. The six burned unfortunates had been left in the square. There was one guard at the scaffold, probably posted there in case anyone came to try and retrieve the remains. I put him to sleep with a caress and a whisper, then went to the bodies. They were still tied to the posts, and the ravages of flame had left them as anonymous black husks.

They’d not burned long, all told, for if they had the scaffold and the posts would have burned down as well, but they did burn furiously. I knelt by one and lifted a handful of ash. I sniffed it, then dabbed at it with my tongue, then spat.

No angel’s fire had killed these. This was the work of a demon. I could taste its electric stink in the air.

The guard stirred and mumbled at the edge of the scaffold. He’d passed out standing, but the sleep was a deep one. I found the corpse of the Bant porter that Margret had recognized and came face to face with it. The large man had turned small in death, the violent heat of demon fire having twisted his bones and scoured his flesh to charcoal. His teeth had clenched so hard in the moments of his death that he’d broken some, and they formed an uneven rictus against the black ruin of his face.

I came very close, almost near enough to kiss him, and exhaled a long breath against those bared teeth. Then I whispered, “Wake.”

And he did, the corpse suddenly jumping and twitching against the post. Even a practiced necromancer might have flinched, but I kept close and kept my gaze focused. My true form bled out from the shell of my human one, turning my skin mauve, splitting my tongue down the center so it became forked like a serpent’s.

The man let out a ghost of a groan. “No.”

There was an incredible amount of pain and despair in that single whispered word. Without drawing back I said, “Answer a few questions for me, and I’ll let you go.”

The dead man tried to shake his head, but his ruined body wouldn’t allow the movement. “You are a devil.”

I didn’t bother arguing semantics with him. “I offer no bargains, Egon of Ukkerholn, only a measure of justice. Why did these people burn you?”

“He burned me,” Egon groaned. He twitched against the post. “They couldn’t see him. Oh, Goddess, he was right there. His hand… on the priest’s shoulder!”

Had the other demon been in the square that day? I would have to learn who that cleric who’d officiated the execution was.

“Why were you burned, Egon?” I repeated my question with more force.

“I’m still burning!” He mutely wailed. The guard behind me stirred again, and I bit off a curse. The ghost would get stronger the longer I kept him here and let him stew in his pain.

“You are not burning,” I said in a soothing voice, and let the coldness of my breath lick against the burnt leather of his flesh. “It is a winter day and you are on your porch. The children are playing in the snow.”

He settled and would have nodded if he could. “It’s cold. The children are playing… in the snow.”

“Why did you leave Bant, my love?” I ran a hand along his blistered cheek.

“Because Geoff asked me to.” His words were full of regret. “He had a plan… said there was… opportunity in the west. The war was getting close.” A sob broke through his words. “I wanted enough money to get us out of Ukkerholn! I’m sorry.”

I hushed him with a finger on his bared, broken teeth. Opportunity, was it? That didn’t sound like something a desperate husband and father would say while trying to move his family halfway across a continent in the face of war and death.

“What happened?” I asked him in that same soothing tone.

“We arrived, and things were… strange.” The corpse twitched again. “Oh, Bleeding Heaven, it’s so cold! People were vanishing. They were going into the cathedral and not coming back out. Master Geoff met with these men, and he had me carry messages, then carry…” He let out another moan of despair. “I wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t leave! He sent for his family. This is no place for children.”

Other than the supernatural sight in the square, the city had seemed bustling and prosperous. Not exactly a fortress of dread, but this man had been here most of a year and probably seen things. He’d probably seen more of what had happened in the square that day, and worse.

The corpse began to tremble more violently. I had more questions, but I’d pushed it too far. I prepared to undo the spell, but paused and considered. I was a lone lesser demon in a cathedral city, with an unknown and hostile spirit at its center who’d already begun displaying open power. It had embedded itself with the local government, taken command of the theocracy, and was using its powers to impress and terrify the city’s populace.

I needed my own agents. And this soul wasn’t going anywhere more pleasant than this.

He must have sensed my hesitation. “You promised to let me go!”

“You are cold, Egon. You are so very cold. So cold it burns…”

Half an hour later, the guard started awake with a sputter and looked about for a moment, at first confused about where he was. The confusion passed, and he realized it was very cold that night. Colder than it should have been in a northern summer. He glanced back at the six burnt dead, and shuddered.

My new hounds wanted at him, but I kept them at bay. Three of the monks had proven useless, having died in quiet acceptance and with faith in their god. But one of them had been full of bitterness and doubt, anchored to his bones just like the porter and the woman, and angry enough to heed me.

I snipped their ghosts from their corpses like panicked birds caught in brambles, then resewed them to myself.

With my three new shadows in tow, I next found the inn that Margret was supposed to reunite with her husband at. It was a nice place, a two-story building near the city’s northern gate that mostly catered to merchants. I provided the letter to the innkeeper along with instructions that my “mistress” would be there the next night. The man seemed confused why Margret wasn’t just using his inn, but he was seeing good business and became distracted quick enough.

Next, I went to the Iron Feather. It was perhaps an hour before midnight by then, and while much of Harkres slept, it was a large enough town to have activity through the night. It wasn’t far from the Knight-Regent’s fortress, an ugly, squat castle made for function over beauty that sat like a stone toad on a hill. There were people out on the street in front of the tavern. Music and voices given the volume of strong drink filled the night air. It was a street of taverns, and of brothels, and I was immediately reminded of some old haunts.

I saw many women with red-and-white cords about their waists, and a few men wearing the same. Even at night, the northern air was warm and most wore sleeveless tunics or light dresses. Off-duty guardsmen were abundant, but there were also mercenaries and caravaners.

Even for that diversity, I got looks. In part because I was an attractive young woman walking alone through a certain part of town, and also because it was obvious that I was Oroi. I’d made a few small adjustments to my appearance to make it more obvious, making my complexion paler, altering my hair into a common style to that region. It was slicked back from my face now, worn long down between my shoulderblades to leave the shaved sides of my head visible. I used ash taken from the burnt bodies in the square and rubbed them onto my eyelids to darken them.

It came as no surprise to find a tavern that catered to the local soldiery packed and loud. Almost all of the patrons were members of the city watch. The taproom was large, crowded, and the musician was terrible. Everyone was too drunk to mind. It looked and felt like taverns all the world over. There were no chairs or stools, so everyone sat on the ground around low square tables, a common layout both in the north and in the coastlands of the inland sea.

I searched a minute before catching sight of the guardsman from the square. He saw me when one of his mates nudged him, and  almost tripped over himself coming to greet me, to the amusement of his fellows. He grinned widely as he got close enough to talk, though even then he had to raise his voice.

“You came!” He exclaimed. He was quite tall, and out of his armor he seemed less… sharp, I suppose. The silvered white steel had given him a polish, but without it he might have been a handsome farmhand. His hair was dark and shaggy, his shaven chin heavy without being brutish, and he had long limbs that let him loom over many of those nearby. He wore a simple short tunic that left his strong arms bare.

I gave him the same quick, uncertain smile as in the square that day. “I did.”

He shook his head, as though torn between relief and bafflement. “I never got your name.”

“We were distracted,” I reminded him. Then, after enough of a pause to torment him just a little I added, “Shy. Tarik, right?”

He nodded eagerly, then ushered me to the table he’d been drinking at and began to introduce me to his friends. There were three men and one woman, all members of the Harkresian Guard, all about his age or a bit younger. I noted each of their names and faces. They had a good humor, though they seemed perplexed at their friend’s sudden acquaintance.

Room was made for us at the table, Tarik sitting on the rugs crosslegged while I sat sidelong to accommodate my long tunic, which was really more of a dress.

“So you just arrived at the city today, hun?” The female guard asked me. She was from further north, with the swirling white tattoos of a steppe nomad. Her name was Lekkee. Her friends had trouble pronouncing it, so they just called her Luck.

At my nod, one of the men, a bearded archer name Bak, shook his head mournfully. “That means you saw what happened at the Pious Gate today. And you still wanted to come have drinks with a guardsman, after that?”

Tarik suddenly went wide-eyed, as though it had only just occurred to him that he’d asked me on a date while on duty at an execution. Atosa, a huge black-skinned Huran with a quiet manner, shook his head mournfully.

I gave the group a self-conscious smile. “Tarik helped us. And besides, I don’t have any clan here, just Miss Margret. It seemed good to have a friend.”

Luck gave me a sympathetic look, while Bak took a thoughtful sip of Bradivaran wheat ale. A wiry man called Persay said, “That’s smart, especially for a—”

Atosa nudged him hard in the side to cut him off. Tarik glared, and Luck winced.

I just smiled at the group. “For an Oroi witch?”

They shifted in discomfort. Persay coughed. Tarik threw me a worried glance. The terrible minstrel transferred to a new song and began to butcher a Kellian jig.

I held up my hands, palms up, and shrugged. “I don’t do fortunes, so don’t ask.”

Atosa began to laugh. The man had a beautiful laugh, deep and from the belly, and it carried across the large taproom. The others soon joined him, and the tension deflated.

“I like her,” Luck said and raised a mug.

“You like every pretty girl,” Persay complained into his own cup. He was really quite drunk.

“But that was terrible,” I said. “Those people must have done something very evil to deserve that!”

I made my eyes wide and my words earnest, the naive outsider incarnate. The table grew quiet and they all exchanged looks.

“Yeah. Real evil bastards, those old monks and that alcrra.” Persay spoke over the lip of his cup. His sarcasm could have curdled milk.

Alcrra. It is difficult to properly translate the word, but it is the Bradivaran term for a noble lady, particularly one who dwells in a country estate. Interesting.

“Wasn’t she…” I made a motion at my belt.

Persay’s face went red with anger. “Wasn’t right, what they did. Slandering the woman like that.”

“Careful, Pers.” Tarik made a motion to lower their voices.

“Why, one of the Knight-Regent’s commissars going to take me in?” Persay slapped his cup down, sloshing its contents over the table and causing Atosa to scowl at the mess.

“They might,” Bak muttered. “I might, if you don’t keep your fucking mouth shut.”

Atosa made a gesture for them all to be calm, and either they respected him enough to listen or he was the ranking figure there. His speaking voice was as deep and melodic as his laugh. “This is not talk for a festive night. A dark thing happened today. Let us put it behind us.”

“Fuck that!” Persay jabbed a finger into the surface of the table. “This isn’t how things are supposed to be, and you all know it! The Guard is trained to fight drakes and wyverns and the occasional band of war ogres, not round up citizens and watch them burned alive. What happened in the square today was evil. The fucking priests made us part of it!”

“Keep your voice down!” Luck hissed. We were getting looks.

I let my fingers curl around Tarik’s elbow, making it seem an unconscious gesture. He shivered and leaned closer.

Persay took a deep breath and made a visible effort to calm himself. “I’m drunk. All I’m saying is… it feels wrong. Things have felt wrong for a while.”

None of the others disagreed, and the topic moved on to other matters. Jokes. Mention of interesting new visitors to the city. Some chatter about the war in Bant or some new pirate king in the inland sea. A rogue storm ogre causing bad weather in another country. Anything but the darkness currently creeping through their city.

Listening to other conversations around us proved more of the same. There was an air of tension that the city seemed to be trying to ignore, but I got the sense that Persay wasn’t the only dissatisfied voice. This Knight-Regent was becoming more interesting to me.

“So,” Persay asked after a while as he caught my gaze. “What’s an Oroi girl like you doing playing handmaid to an eastern lady?”

I smiled shyly. “I’m not sure she’s nobly born, just used to comforts.”

Bak snorted. “What’s the difference? She’s probably got relations with the Urnic Houses. It’s them the Bant are revolting against, if you cut to the heart of it.”

He was better informed than I would have guessed, and it put a thought in my head. Bant was dominated by monastic orders that made up the Aureate Church, and in that country the feudal lords were often relations to the noble houses in Urn and deeply intermarried with the clergy. Clerical titles were often hereditary, and there were rumors that both the Castias and the Bant nobles took edicts from the subcontinent.

Margret was obviously a woman used to authority. She’d been reflexively offended when I took charge, and only her hundreds of miles of hardship and loss had cowed her enough to bend that pride. And her husband, a clericon from Ukkerholn, was here in Harkres during a very interesting time.

Something to consider. Perhaps she was a noblewoman.

“Seriously, though.” Lekkee leaned forward with sharp interest. “What is your story, hun?”

Tarik gave his friend a dark look. “There’s no need to interrogate her.”

“Course there is!” Persay raised his eyebrows. “She caught you, Tarik, and you’re our comrade. It’s our right to grill her. Have to make sure she hasn’t bitten your eyes…”

“That drivel about the Oroi cursing people is just mean-spirited superstition,” Bak argued. “It’s not friendly ribbing if she’s afraid that we might turn her into the inquisitors.”

So, there were inquisitors in Harkres. Noted.

Persay looked abashed, though Atosa and Lekkee both looked less certain. Hura and the steppe nomads were both ancient cultures with ancient grudges, less prone to dismissing superstition out of hand. Atosa studied me with appraising eyes the color of onyx, his gaze thoughtful and intelligent.

He and Lekkee were not city-born, I’d gathered, but rather given to the Harkresian Guard by their respective nations as a tithe to help keep the Wyvernmurk at bay. Much of Hakres’s military might was built that way. Bradivara was mighty, but that might remained reliant on its neighbors and their shared interest in keeping the Blight in check.

Harkres was a lodestone to an entire corner of the world. Something to consider.

“You alright?” Tarik asked me. I’d been lost in thought for some time while the others chattered.

I smiled at him. “I just arrived at your lovely city today after a very long journey. I might be a bit tired.”

He nodded slowly, and I watched him make the decision to be bold. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

At my nod, we both stood and the man wished the others a good night. There were poorly veiled jokes and knowing looks. Atosa drank from his mug, his gaze on me and not at all interested in the same way as Tarik.

But he didn’t stop us from going. Before we left the tavern, the awful minstrel went jarringly silent as a string on his vielle snapped, and there were groans and insults across the taproom. I hid my smile.

Tarik led me several blocks to another neighborhood, this one quiet, with an empty street. There were lanterns lit all across the city, and the stars and moons were out in a dazzling northern sky, but it was still quite dark.

At the door, the courage provided by ale and the presence of his friends deserted him. Tarik got a small key out and fiddled with it a moment. “I could take you back to your inn, if you want. We don’t have to… just because of earlier today, I didn’t expect that… I mean, you don’t have to—”

I plucked the key from his hand and unlocked the door, then offered it back to him. He let out a laugh of relief and we went in together.

The interior of the small house was very dark, and the night was too warm for a fire. Alchemical lanterns were banned in Bradivara, so we stood in the darkness of the little house’s entry room. Tarik opened some windows to let moonlight in, though it did little more than give shape to the shadows.

When Tarik turned, he found me very close and looking up into his face. His breathing was heavy, his heartbeat so loud I could almost hear it like drumbeats.

“I don’t even know you,” he breathed.

Without a word, without dropping my gaze, I brought my hands up to the front of my tunic. There were ribbons of cloth that tied it at mid-stomach and again at the waist. I undid them and let the garment fall open. Then I reached up to wrap my arms about his neck and kissed him.

He shivered and leaned in. When I pulled back, he was already too dazed to notice the unnatural lights shining at the centers of my eyes, or take note that the nails on his neck had become like claws.

“Now you know me,” I told him.

So passed my first day in Harkres.