The edge of shadow, p.16
The Edge of Shadow, page 16
part #5 of The Kin of Kings Series
He had great plans for the enemy uniforms, but today his task was simple. As he walked toward the center of the capital, his uniform commanded respect in the most uncomfortable way. It made people fear him.
He almost gave in to his instincts to ease their fear with a smile or a greeting, but doing so would go against what he was hoping to accomplish.
“What are you staring at!” he growled at a little girl gawking at him.
Her mother swept her up. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The girl cried as the mother ran off with her.
Guilt ate away at him. He needed more practice to get rid of this feeling before he came into contact with his enemies.
Basen told an old man to get his ugly face out of his way while purposely walking toward him. After that, he waited for a woman near his age to walk by and then turned back and tilted his head for a good long look at her rump, ensuring others saw him do so. A few streets later, he started to pass by a beggar, only to stop. Seeing the man’s fear, Basen turned and stared right at him. Basen said nothing, but it was enough to get the man to take his bowl with his measly coins and hurry off.
These acts of disrespect left such a bitter taste in his mouth, he made sure to disturb these poor people only when there were many others looking on.
By the time he made it to the training center near the castle, he’d lost himself in the role so much that not even a psychic could tell he was an imposter. The training center was empty again. He walked down the road and into the first armory on the way. There were two men cooking up lunch. Basen was hungry, so he would be taking some of their food. One of the men was old enough to be the other’s father, though both were considerably older than Basen.
The sneer he wore told these men he was there to make trouble, both of them grimacing before they could hide their annoyance behind false smiles.
“Do you need something, sir?” the younger one asked.
Basen sniffed the air the way a noble might sniff a glass of wine before drinking. “That smells good,” he said in his roughest voice and watched their worry worsen.
They glanced at each other from the sides of their eyes.
“If both of you are busy eating,” Basen continued in a sarcastic tone, “who will attend to all your business?” He gestured at the empty shop of weapons and armor.
They offered no reply yet somehow managed to look hungrier, as if barely resisting the urge to devour all the contents in their bowls before Basen could walk over and take them.
“I think you’ll agree that you should leave the eating to me,” Basen said. He’d been holding the figurative dagger at their throats and had finally run it across.
He came toward them, fully prepared for a brawl if they were stupid enough to take him on. The eldest stepped in front of his meager bowl of what turned out to be beans.
“Can I offer you a weapon instead?” he pleaded.
Pity almost broke Basen, but he kept the weak feeling at bay. “Get out of my way.”
The old man shuffled aside with a whimper as if about to object. The younger stared until Basen glanced over at him, then he took a long look at the floor.
Basen took the bowl and had himself a hefty bite. He made a sound of disgust, then licked his teeth clean as he set the bowl down.
“I hope you have a better lunch for me next time.” He walked out the door.
He proceeded to visit every shop on the street and outrage every last one of them. It didn’t take much to sour their day when the mere sight of him caused such fear. It turned out that noon was the best time to go, as many of them had food for him to steal.
By the time he was finished, he was full to the point of nausea. Now that he was done, the sour taste from earlier came back with such force that it filled his mouth and traveled all the way down his throat into his stomach. He couldn’t hold it in.
Basen stumbled into a nearby tavern and emptied his stomach across the entrance with a loud retch. Playing the drunken fool, he pointed at everyone reacting quite appropriately to his disgusting act and yelled at them.
“Shut up or I’ll arrest you!” He spun on his heels, pretended to lose his balance, then walked off with a drunken swagger.
He made his way to the castle. It was just enough distance from the scene of his disaster for him to feel safe from recognition by the people he’d wronged. He exchanged a few nods with the guards as he made his way around to the back of the castle. The stone structure that protected the man he most needed to kill was, unfortunately and obviously, designed as a fortress. The back wall stretched out longer than most streets. There was no way to know how thick it was.
Even if he was able to make a portal into part of it, could the portal create enough damage to get through? The castle was built on a grassy hill, but Basen found one spot along the back wall where the top of a buried rock poked through the grass. It was the best marker he could find, so it was here he began to gather energy.
To make himself less conspicuous, he leaned against the wall while he worked, keeping his arms crossed as if taking a break. It didn’t take long to draw the attention of the troops walking along the road at the bottom of the hill. They looked at him with curiosity but did nothing.
It wasn’t until an hour had passed that two soldiers yelled up to ask him what he was doing.
“Looking for shade,” he said in his drunken voice.
They glanced at each other, said something, then started up the hill toward him. A moment later, they were taking him away from the castle “for your own good, before an officer sees you.”
“What happened to your hat?” one of them asked.
“Have you ever tried to put it on with a sword?” he replied.
“No.”
“Don’t.”
They chuckled.
“Aren’t you a little young?” the other man asked.
“I have to get back,” Basen said, pretending he hadn’t heard the question.
Fortunately, they let him go without voicing suspicion.
He would have to come back to the castle at night to gather energy without being bothered.
Basen ventured down the rest of the streets around the castle, memorizing the exact location of every place where he planned to return when it was time. The key locations were where people were most likely to be harassed by guards: brothels, armories, taverns, tailors, bakeries, and anywhere that employed women whose looks might garner attention.
It was evening by the time he arrived back in his district. He still wasn’t used to the glances by then. He waited until his street was empty before walking down to his sanctuary, then made sure he hadn’t been seen before opening the cellar doors and going down to meet Sanya.
“I thought you’d died!” she complained. “At least tell me where you’re going when you leave like that!”
He stood silently in front of her, confused. She cocked her head to the side.
“What don’t you understand?” she asked.
“You want to leave and never return, yet you can’t seem to handle my disappearance for a day.”
“I can handle it fine. It’s the way you left without saying anything that bothers me. Where in god’s world did you go?”
“I walked around the streets near the castle. Most of Ulric’s troops are there, so it’s where our spies will gather the most information.”
She gestured at the empty basement. “What spies?”
“Our future spies.”
“You could’ve told me what you were doing.”
“I’m not sure how many psychics there are under Ulric’s command. A conversation with you was bound to make me doubt the safety of my task.”
She pointed toward the moving shadows. “I’m tired of controlling them.”
“Is the akorell stone charged yet?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s time to go back to the colony with our new pets.”
“I’ve been practicing making portals,” she said. “Let me make it.”
“If you fail, we’ll have to wait for the akorell stone to charge again. The longer we leave our enemies’ bodies in our colony, the higher the chances someone will find them. We’ll figure out a way to make more akorell stones soon enough.”
She glanced down at the stone for a while, then eventually handed it over. “First change out of that uniform. It’s making me angry.”
“What isn’t?”
She grumbled as he went to his side of the basement to change.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The sound of the febeetles munching on the carcasses was similar to crumbling paper. Once they were done, they would need to be put in a pen so Basen and Sanya could leave them here and locate their allies in the forest. But there were very few loose rocks to make an enclosure, so Basen decided to dig holes instead.
Sanya’s arm was still healing, though Basen figured she could help him dig if she wanted to. But instead, she used her injury as an excuse and lay surprisingly close to the febeetles to shut her eyes and relax.
It wasn’t easy to dig a hole in this hard dirt, but he managed to get many done in the next hour. Stretching out his sore back, he told Sanya, “Send them into the holes so we can see if they’ll all fit.”
She got up and pointed her hand. Basen hurried out of the way as the insect army flooded over the ground in front of him. Slowly, the sea of black began to disappear around the holes until they were all squirming around inside.
“They hate it in there,” Sanya said. “They want to return.”
“Release your control to see if they can.”
“I can’t release my control. Psyche doesn’t work like that. Their feeble minds are different than that of humans. Everything I force them to feel alters them in permanent ways. They want to escape the holes, but I’m telling them that the holes are good. All I can do is stop telling them the holes are good.”
“Then do that.”
She bent a few of her fingers, and the creatures poured out of the holes in no time. Basen ran to escape as many came for him, possibly smelling his flesh.
“Sanya!”
“I’m trying. There are so many.” The lack of urgency in her voice made Basen run even faster.
“They’re under control!” Sanya shouted to him eventually.
He turned to see them receding like a wave sliding back from the beach to the ocean.
“The holes are no good,” Sanya said.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
The last thing he wanted now was to spend another hour exhausting himself to create some other form of containment, only for it to fail.
The two of them thought for a while, the beetles returning to their feast of corpses.
Basen came to only one solution.
“You’re going to have to stay here with them,” he told Sanya.
“I’m not going to do that. I’ve spent nearly the last two days with them, hardly able to sleep.”
“You just told me your arm is still too injured to dig,” he chided. “How do you expect to run through the forest without reopening your wound?”
She heaved out her breath. “I’m sure I’ll find a way.”
“No, we can’t risk the febeetles leaving the colony. We’re going to need them.”
“For what?”
“To kill Ulric.”
She lifted her finger and opened her mouth as if to object but then stopped. “How?”
“They will help us get to him when it’s time to attack.”
She took a long look at the febeetles. “Fine, but you’d better come back soon and have thought of some way to contain them without me spending the rest of the war here. I’m too useful to waste away here.”
“I can’t deny that. But before I go, I need you to promise me something. Whoever I find and bring back, you will give them your best effort to be nice. I don’t care if you have to act. Be like the Sanya who first came to the Academy, no matter how they treat you.”
“Even if they treat me like Peter did?”
“Peter’s dead.” Basen cradled the handle of his sword.
“So what?”
“God’s mercy, Sanya! This is exactly why I have to tell you to behave. You’ve regressed into your old self, a woman without empathy or knowledge of social conduct. I’m tired of it. At least try.”
She rubbed her forehead as if scratching an itch with her fingertips. Then she threw down her hand and said, “Fine.”
He’d been doing so much walking recently, his feet ached as he made his way out of the colony.
There was still some light left in the day, but it would be night soon. Determined to find someone before then, he hurried to cover his tracks near the colony entrance, then ventured out. Once he’d gone farther, he rushed around until he found a trail of footprints.
He was no tracker, so he couldn’t follow them as quickly as he wanted. Night fell upon him with no signs of whether his quarry was ally or enemy.
Eventually he started hearing sounds behind him that he first thought to be an animal. He stopped to listen but heard nothing else. He had to consider the possibility that someone was following him, or perhaps was following the same trail that he was.
He used rocks and roots to veer off the forest path and hide himself in a copse of bushes. He waited and listened. Moonlight illuminated the forest with a touch of silver as pillars of the faint light came down between the gaps of treetops. Basen had made sure to put himself in the darkest spot nearby, but that didn’t make him any less afraid as he witnessed an army of blue uniforms seeping in through the trees. A giant led them, the same giant Basen had faced atop the Fjallejon Mountains, as there could be no other man of the same size.
Basen eased toward the back side of the shrubbery so he might be able to slip away if they came too close, but the sound of leaves was deafening as he tried to move. All he could do was shrink lower and hope he wasn’t seen.
No doubt the hunt for his allies was still happening. At least it meant there were survivors for him to locate. He just had to find them before his enemies did.
First, he needed to get out of here alive.
The army stopped. He could catch only glimpses of them, but there seemed to be someone pointing in his direction. Then they began to circle.
A psychic! Basen had been sensed.
He stood and shot a fireball at the men coming around to block his escape, sending the one he struck rolling backward and the others jumping behind a tree for cover. Basen ran in the only direction he could without going straight toward them, the same direction as the footprints he’d been following.
These enemies did not yell out Basen’s location like the others had. They gave chase for only a moment and then let him go. Perhaps they had witnessed his superior speed and didn’t want to separate from each other in a pointless effort, or they had some trap planned.
He slowed to a jog and watched the ground for rope or string or net. He felt something coming down from above!
Basen dove as something crashed down where he had just been standing. He aimed his wand and pulled his sword as he spun back to face his enemy.
“Basen?”
“Neeko, thank god!” Basen put away his sword to give the other man a fierce hug. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“And I you! Come, I’ll take you to the others.”
“Alabell?” Basen asked.
“And more.”
Before Neeko could take a step, Basen grabbed him from the side and hoisted him off the ground with an excited bear hug.
“Basen, Basen! It’s not safe here.”
He let Neeko down. “I’m not sorry.”
Neeko laughed. “This way.”
“Did you hear the fireball?” Basen asked.
“Yes, was that you?”
“It was. What happened to you during the battle at the Academy? I came to the medical building to help but you and the others had already left. Cleve saw you going north and sent me after you, but I never found you.”
“We tried to evacuate everyone, but there were many injured who were too slow even with our help. Cassius led the Tenred troops through the medical building, many of them stopping to slaughter everyone within their reach. We fought briefly, then ran. It was the only way to survive.” There was heavy guilt in Neeko’s voice.
“You did the right thing. We will get revenge.”
“I almost did, but I failed.”
“What do you mean?”
But Neeko put up his hand. They stopped to listen. Something skulked around behind them. Basen made light in its direction.
The small animal darted into the bushes and disappeared before Basen could recognize it.
“We shouldn’t speak here,” Neeko said.
Basen nodded.
They walked for a while before Neeko called out, “Here?”
It seemed to be some sort of signal, so Basen didn’t ask.
“No,” a voice responded from the darkness between the trees ahead. “And you?”
“Deadly,” Neeko replied.
Sudden light made Basen shield his eyes.
“Who is that with you?” It was definitely Effie’s voice.
“Prepare to be surprised,” Basen teased.
“Oh my stars.” The silhouette of Alabell hurtled toward him. He opened his arms and caught her. The feeling of relief was like a tidal wave, abolishing all his other fears and worries. He didn’t care how many planned to kill them. So long as he was with Alabell, he would keep both of them safe.
Basen was about to show her with his lips how glad he was to see her again when someone demanded, “Do I get a turn?” He turned to see Effie with hands on hips. “Or are these hugs reserved for partners?”
“I hugged Neeko earlier,” Basen said, reluctantly releasing Alabell. “Twice. So I’d like to think not.”
Alabell sniffled as if holding in tears. “We figured there was a good chance you were dead,” she told Basen as he and Effie embraced.
“There were a few close moments, but I’m unhurt.”
They brought him to the rest of their group—Shara, Steffen, and Effie’s sister, Gabby—and Basen hugged every one of them.
“Good. Chemists,” he remarked. “And mages: bastial, sartious, and pyforial. I need all of you. I have a safe location. I will show you if you come with me.”
