Knite

Roofs outside central Crown are ill-made for travel. Slanted roofs—employed as a defense against the persistent bouts of rain the capital suffered—made moving about them a nuisance.

I crouched on the edge of a roof, across the plaza from the gate to The Branches. The green glow from The Leaves was stronger here than anywhere else in The Bark, burning my eyes with memories of when I’d last seen its full glory. My coign of vantage atop one of the most opulent buildings in The Bark gave me a decent view of the three roads that led to the plaza, though the southern entrance, closer to the gate than to where I crouched, was somewhat obscured.

Leahne hadn't reached the gate to The Branches yet—or so I hoped. Helena and I had agreed she would likely apprehend Farian before she made her way to her master. She’d escaped my grasp before and was likely confident she could do so again. I wouldn’t let that happen. Broken mask or not, when she came…

It was two turns of waiting before I spotted her. She came from the north, from the smallest of the three streets that led to the plaza, pulling at Farian as he limped and stumbled after her, his hands tied, his mouth gagged, blood seeping from a shallow cut on his neck.

I dropped down to the street, softening my landing so as to not alert my prey. The gate guards had a line of sight across the entire plaza. I would get to her before she reached that turn. I dashed from alley to alley, leaped over walls, and swung from overhanging handholds, intercepting her away from where my task would’ve been complicated by meddlesome watchmen.

I sauntered to the middle of the street. She halted and cocked her head, unable to see my face. I pulled down my cowl; she would concede or die knowing who I was.

She smiled. “You have my thanks. Until you came along, my life was effectively over. I thought you a test, a way to prove I deserved what they’d refused me. I see now that you are so much more.”

“Release him,” I said. “If I deem you innocent of all but recklessness, I will spare your life. Otherwise…”

She furrowed her brows, unable to match the voice to the face she saw and knew. My brother had once told me that the deep timbre of my tone resonated with the fear hidden in the hearts of those who heard it, that its very vibrations commanded the quickening of their pulses, that the hearts, more often than not, obeyed.

Leahne paused, her dark eyes watching me.

I shot a slice of sensus at the ropes that bound Farian. The rope slackened in her hands. and her laughter seized. She smirked, then smiled, then, luscious lips parting, fell into a fitful laugh.

“You may take this fool,” she said, dropping the now untethered rope. “But I will be leaving.”

“Move aside, Father,” I called out. Farian shuffled to the far end of the street. He had always been proud to call me blunt, bragging that it was he who gave me my penchant for truth. It wasn’t so, but he heeded my words because of it.

I took out my twin swords: four-foot, double-edged blades that were my preferred weapons. A few casual waves formed an invisible zephyr shield that would dull the commotion of what came next.

“Leahne,” I said, letting my deep voice play off the shrilling blades. A trembling Leahne yelped a laugh. “I know you believe yourselves capable of fleeing.” I took a step forward; she took one back. “You are not. I know you think you’ve grasped the extent of my strength.” I tipped a blade with a wind matrix and swung it casually, leaving a gash on the cobbled road and casting fragments of stone into the air, some of the lighter pieces rebounding off the wall of wind I’d erected. “You have not. I know you believe you will escape me…” Leahne backed away. I could hear her heart pounding, but she overcame whatever fear I’d caused and the air between us shimmered with her namat.

My mask all but collapsed. Light-brown hair turned stark black. Hazel eyes shifted to a dull green almost too dark to be called anything but black. A hooked nose straightened and narrowed, cheekbones widened, shoulders broadened, fingers elongated, and at last, I was truly Knite again—body and soul.

My swords rushed forward, marked by a sensus not seen since my death, lacking all but the spark of meaning it typically came with. They sliced through the closest of her mirages, top to bottom, forcing the mist of her illusion to roll and churn across the ground, dispersing outwards. The glassy smoke charged towards her other illusions, destroying them until all had dissolved into the night air.

Leahne fell to one knee, her breathing coming in wheezy gasps. Having used most of her sensus and then suffered the backlash of my dispelling, soul-exhaustion ate away at her.

I walked closer and stood over her. “You will not.”

She looked up at me, raising her head with difficulty. Her fear had grown and blossomed, so captivating and rich and aromatic I could taste it in the back of my throat. My mouth began to water. I wanted to whistle my tune and feast, but a deeper part of me would not allow it. Not yet. Not unless…

“Prince Knite,” she sighed.

“You are not old enough to recognize me,” I said, sheathing my twin swords.

“You have a whole section in my sector’s library,” she said. The soul exhaustion took away more of her and she dropped to her hands and knees. “Each of the books speaks of your deeds.” She rolled to her back, losing weight before my very eyes. “Both the height of your strength, which they encourage us to mimic, and the depth of your betrayal, which they warn us to avoid. It is known that you are the only being to have black sensus.”

“A section?” I asked, walking over to her. “I’m surprised the old hag would allow my name to be kept in the annals of history.”

Despite her mounting weakness, she tried to swing at me. I grabbed her wrist, feeling nothing but skin and bone. Most of her fear had waned into an odd mixture of mirth and anger. My lust for death receded, replaced with curious amusement.

“Do not…insult…The Queen,” she said, panting. Her body was limp now, her eyes half-closed, her clothes hanging off her skeletal frame.

“The Bark and Roots have no such books,” I said. “Here, where the larger masses live, she’s reduced me into a mythical parable, a fable uttered to children, a woven tale of a cruel and powerful man who betrayed all he knew. All part of the drivel that worms past her slithering tongue of course.”

I put my palm to Leahne’s forehead and fed her the sensus she so craved. Her soul suckled on my offering, hungrily devouring the nectar of its survival and pulling sustenance into her shriveled body. Her eyes jumped open, energy and weight suffusing back into her.

“That you believe these lies tells me you are more foolish than guilty,” I said. “I will not take your life.” I took back my hand and stood. “But you will serve me until your dying day, and in exchange, I’ll release you from slavery—both the manacles of their lies and the chains of their control.”

Rosy cheeks brought color back to her pale complexion. She could move but chose not to, her soul a miasma of doubt.

Farian approached. I behaved as though I’d not noticed. He’d seen me turn from a son to a stranger to a prince. Understandably, his loyalties were in a state of turbulence. My souleye could see the truth of it. My soul would not. Could not.

He stopped behind me. I hoped it wasn’t a reluctance to make himself known as friend or foe or malevolent stranger.

“Where is my son?” he asked.

I turned to the closest thing to a father I’d ever known. He’d unbound the ropes and gag from his wrists and mouth. The blood from his wound had stopped and there were smears where he’d tried to wipe it off.

“Here,” I said.

“No,” he said, oddly calm. “Where is he?”

I touched the spot between the top of my neck and the base of my head, the place where the soul met the body. “Here.”

Farian looked away. He did not cry—he never cry—but his eyes looked past me and off into the distance like they were trying to pierce the veil of reality, like what I’d said was an illusion he could see through if only he stared at it hard enough.

“I have no son?” he asked.

“You’re a father to a part of me, Farian.”

“I have no son?” he asked again.

I approached and placed a hand on his shoulder. A weak gesture, but the best I could offer.

“But I raised you from infancy?” he said.

“I am a prince, Farian.” Everyone knew we were immortal—at least against the ravages of time. Age was but a decision to us.

Farian blinked away his shock. “I have no son.” He wasn’t asking anymore. “You mean that I have to contend with a dead son who never existed?” His hand brushed mine off his shoulder. Even without my souleye, I could see his anger. “Why? Why did you…”

“I could tell you it wasn’t me, and in a way, it would be true,” I said. The quiet rage in him, unlike the bubbling anger he so often buried, persisted and demanded I answer. I decided he deserved that much. “But I allowed it, and for that, I tell you this. She asked and I gave it to her because I could. I gave it because I could not give her what she wanted most. Because I wanted her to have something in its stead.”

Farian watched me. He was among the few who ascended from The Muds; he knew how to capitulate when defeat was certain. It was how he’d survived and prospered. Yet the coiled tension of his body said he was having trouble resisting that urge he’d so often defeated.

“Addy?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Where is she?”

“Home,” I said. “Let me—”

“Do not call it that! It isn’t your home!” He held me with a glare until I nodded my understanding, then stalked off, the pain of his hobble forgotten.

I watched him leave, a rare moment of hesitation rooting me to where I stood. I wanted to follow, wanted him to ask me to, wanted him to want me to. But he didn’t. And so I didn’t.

“That was cruel,” Leahne said. She stood behind me, her voice calm.

“It was a kindness that blinded me to the cruelty. Or maybe it was self-interest. Whatever the case, you are right, it was cruel, however unintentional.” I turned to her, once again opening my souleye. “Wise of you not to try an escape.”

“I’m no fool,” she said. “But nor am I a traitor.”

I smiled; curiosity still roiled about her soul, churning into doubt. “Is reciprocation betrayal?”

“Isn’t reciprocation of betrayal, by definition, betrayal?”

“By the very fact that it is reciprocal, it is not.”

She shook her head. “That is beside the point. I’ve lived the consequences of your actions, of your treachery.”

“Mm, and you haven’t lived theirs?”

“I do so gladly.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am an agent of House Lorail. I command powers my parents could only dream of. I’ll live longer than my grandnieces and nephews. Hunger is a distant memory. Sleep has become an abundant yet superfluous indulgence. I’ve conversed with gods, learned to fight and kill and—”

“Is it your fear of poverty they’ve anchored your bonds to?” I asked.

“What?”

“That’s what they do, the godlings. They take the part of you that anchors your whole and mask your bindings within.”

Anger flared in her soul. I reached over my shoulder and tapped the butt of one of my swords. Her anger crumpled below a resurgence of fear and she let loose a peal of laughter. What a strange woman, I thought, to find laughter in fear.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“For what?”

“For me to expel your bonds. Best I remove your blindfold before I show you the truth.”

“And if I say no.”

“Then I would expend a tad more effort,” I said. “Nothing more.”

“And how do I know—”

“A pointless question.” Some of my annoyance bled into my voice. “Come.”

She approached. I strode closer, unhappy with her hesitant pace. For all her reluctance, there was no resistance when I dove into her soul.

Recent memories played out in my mind’s eye, shaded by her emotions. The shock of seeing me kill Rowan came first. There was a hint of awe in that. They’d shared history. One of admirer and admired.

I dug deeper.

I saw her ambush Farian. She came at him from behind, placing a dagger to his throat as he closed the door to his room at the council. There was a jolt of jealousy when he refused to speak of me. Of Merkus.

The scene shifted to when I lowered my shawl. Elation at possible redemption, at gaining back…her power. I would check on that later.

The memories jumped forward.

She knelt on the ground, feeling the backlash eat away at her. She cursed her arrogance. She’d told no one. To her, reaping all she could from uncovering a traitor was worth the risk. She’d not known she’d found the greatest of them all, risk and traitor both.

I pulled on the memory of her elation, tracing it back to when she’d suffered a loss.

She was on assignment. She’d traveled into the Deathly Forrest, heading east to the free-city of Holden. The ruler there lived in a keep made of black stone. He was her mark, her target, the man she’d been sent to kill. She thought she’d caught him unaware. She didn't. He ripped into her soul the moment she’d attacked. Her escape was a near thing.

I pushed forward, to her getting back to her charge, back to Evergreen.

She was in a room of white marble. The Branches. The inner sanctum. Her charge sat across her. Rowan. More than admirer and admired: apprentice and master.

The mark her target had left on her was not of the body, but of the soul. It corroded her namats, her streams. The treatment would cost her master more than she was worth. Her hopes of a cure were crushed. She felt no anger. Only sadness. Only the wretched truth of her demise and her inevitable relegation to The Bark, and Lorail forbid, to The Muds. Rowan tried to disguise it as an assignment, but she’d been banished and they knew it both.

There was resistance when I tried to delve into memories regarding her assignment. Someone had put a matrix there. The traces of sensus felt familiar. Rowan. She thought she was being clever when she hid a destruction matrix beneath. Amateur. I nullified both.

The assignment was Aki. I was an afterthought. They wanted me, but they wanted him more. Much more. ‘Watch him,’ Rowan had ordered. She didn’t tell Leahne why. Leahne had dared to ask. It earned her a slap that broke the skin of her lips. She told herself she deserved it. Deep down, she knew she didn’t. Her mind forced her to believe otherwise. She didn’t notice that happen. I did.

I snatched at the slinking corruption that swayed her thoughts. It tried to wiggle free. I wouldn’t let it. I followed it to a memory isolated by a matrix sphere, shielded even from Leahne herself.

I broke in.

A room. A space to train. Mounted weapons lined one wall. Blood marred the stone floor. Twenty bodies lay in the corner, discarded like trash, limbs intertwined and facing impossible angles, a large pool of red edging outwards beneath them. Dead girls no older than eighteen.

Four students sat beside Leahne in the middle of the room. They still lived, if barely. Rowan stood before them. She stepped aside and went to her knees, hands on her thighs, head bowed.

A child walked in, pausing to stroke Rowan’s hair like someone might pet their lapdog. My sister still preferred her prepubescent body. Wavy hair framed her face, the ends brushing against her delicate shoulders. With her free hand, she twirled a finger around a strand of hair curled about her temple, her face expressionless.

Leahne was exhausted. More than she’d ever been. Fighting and killing five of her fellow apprentices was arduous work. She knew them all. Well. Well enough to know their greatest hopes and deepest fears. They’d spent every waking moment of the last cycle of seasons together—ever since they’d been snatched from their families. She hated them. Each and every one of them. She was meant to. It had been a grueling contest from the moment they met. And as she sat there, kneeling before a god, it wasn’t guilt she felt, or fear, or awe, but pride.

The small girl held up a hand towards her and the other surviving contestants. The torment was sudden and all-consuming. Where she expected to be met with congratulations, she was met with nothing but pain, the type that leaves no room for thought. It blinded her. It expended her existence.

It was a surgery of the soul.

The memory ended.

I started with the isolation matrix, unraveling the components and destroying each element until the memory was free to her. Next, I turned my attention to the scars the surgery left behind. They diverged across her soul, branching off and stretching outwards. I checked them all, faint as they were, smallest to largest. Many led to dead ends where Lorail’s imprint had failed to take hold or last. Some withered but remained. I let those be. They would fade with time. Only one held true, latched onto a part of her fear, a part buried deep in her soul. The long scar that led there warped aspects of her into something else…something different…some amalgamation of parts I did not recognize. I removed the imprint, but, for now, the scars were there to stay. If they could be healed, only she could do so. I saw the virulent smoke that dissolved her namat. It smelled vile. It too would stay. Curing her of it would erase her value to me.

I let go of Leahne’s neck, drawing back from her soul. Her eyes fluttered open, meeting my own and telling me they remembered the memory I’d uncovered, felt the freedom I’d restored.

“Let's go,” I said, holding out a hand. She flinched back from it, giggling. I was beginning to understand why. “We have the rest of a long night ahead of us.”