The duelist 9, p.21
The Duelist 9, page 21
Taking over? I knew Krev Alda had been a megalomaniacal dickhead, but had he seriously wanted to take over all of Aventoll? Why?
His actions in the past were furtive, and honestly pretty sensible. He’d avoided taking faces of people who were too high-profile, and because of that, he’d managed to infiltrate some of the most important houses in Aventoll. He’d lived here for decades, and no one had been any the wiser. So much so that most of his allies still believed he was alive, just living as me, with my face, and my life.
“Knowledge is power,” I said to the cleric, and my mind reeled with ideas and explanations as to what Krev’s plan had been. “And I am curious as to what the Order and the Council would seek to hide from their people. The best lies have a grain of truth at the center. I’m sure we can use some of those truths to turn the people of Aventoll against their established governments.”
“Precisely!” the cleric said and nodded eagerly.
“But so far, your efforts have been unsuccessful?” I asked.
The cleric flinched like I’d struck him, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zoie smirk.
“Y-Yes, but Eng is a large island!” the cleric explained quickly. “Even more so when you consider the Eng-folk made use of the underground. There are many hiding places, but I am making progress! I have found pieces of information that were potentially discarded or stolen before the Archives were buried. They talk about how Alem is responsible for the Red Skies, as a ploy to make sure Ashers of the Blood remain necessary.”
“We already knew that,” I said flatly, because even as I internally reeled from that bit of information, like hell was I going to let this guy know he’d caught me off guard.
I supposed it made a weird sort of sense. There was no pattern to the Red Skies, not as far as I’d been able to tell, and after Shay had healed the Heart of an Island, a Red Sky no longer automatically meant demons.
Still, it was a powerful bit of magic to turn the sky red, and even more powerful to be able to stir up demons from sick Hearts. How had they figured out they could draw up demons from the Hearts, out of the sickness? And what did they fear so much that they were willing to terrorize the rest of Aventoll?
As soon as we were done here, we needed to head to Alem and figure this shit out. We’d already surmised the Order and the Council were in on something, and that the Prophetess was connected, but whatever they were hiding, and whatever Krev Alda wanted from them, my Crew and I needed to deal with it before more people got hurt.
“Of course, of course, Asher Alda,” the cleric said, and he did a weird bowing and scraping motion made all the weirder since he wasn’t actually facing me as he did it. “But it is curious, isn’t it? That this information never reached past Eng?”
“Not that curious, the Eng-folk were cursed with madness,” I said flatly, and the cleric turned to me and pointed.
“Exactly!” he said, and his expression was gleeful. “They were cursed by a High Priestess after their intellect and curiosity became too great!”
“You think they discovered the conspiracy about Alem?” I asked, and I tried to keep my voice as even and disinterested as possible as I raised one eyebrow. “They were… silenced?”
“It’s possible,” the cleric said with a shrug. “But it got me thinking. If a powerful Priestess could curse an entire Island, then the means exists to curse others, too! Perhaps we can harness it! We just need to know what… what the power source for the spell was.”
I knew only the most powerful magics required ‘sources’ because normally magic drew on the life energy of the person who was casting the spell to begin with. Shay was connected to the Heart of Aventoll, which was what gave her those incredible Incarnate powers. Anwaar, as a mage in the Order, had been trained how to use her own natural energy in the most efficient way possible. It made sense, though, that a spell designed to curse an entire Island with madness had required a source.
“I’m calling it the ‘Divine Component,’” the cleric continued. “But I have the rest assembled, I think! I promise it’s worth your time, Asher Alda. I just have to-- Darkhells, what in Mercedes name are you doing here?”
The cleric’s tone had abruptly gone from excited and slightly smarmy to sharp and irritated, and I blinked a few times to adjust to the low lighting of the tunnels before I noticed a drillbeast was sitting off to one side in the little cavern we’d walked into.
The cavern itself looked like a small office or workshop, with desks clustered on one side, covered in papers and bits of disassembled metal contraptions. As for the drillbeast in the corner, I knew I didn’t know much about the creatures, but I could tell it was on the older side. Its face was wrinkled and gray in patches, and there was a sort of kink or dent to the straight line of its snout, like a drill bit that had collided with something too solid and had been broken.
Overall, it looked completely pitiful.
“Wretched creature!” the cleric snarled, and he batted at the drillbeast until it pathetically shuffled to the side and curled up into an even smaller ball at the edge of the cavern.
I felt my blood boil. I’d already known this guy was a grade-A dickbag, but seeing him mistreat this poor creature was getting on my last nerve.
I knew I would have to bear it, though, if I was going to get answers. About Krev. About Alem. About the Order and the Council and everything else. We were on the edge of uncovering a seriously big conspiracy, I could practically taste it, and I couldn’t afford to lose my focus. Countless people would be hurt or even killed if I let myself get distracted.
But in the privacy of my mind, I promised myself and the poor drillbeast that this cleric bastard would die screaming.
Behind me, I knew Zoie and Horus were also tense, and both of them wanted to leap to the poor drillbeast’s defense. But they, like me, knew we needed more information on what Krev Alda’s plans had been, and this apparent Alemic plan to manufacture the Blood Ashers’ necessity.
Even so, every line on Zoie’s body was taut, like a coiled spring, and I could see Horus was struggling not to let his feathers become visibly ruffled.
“I don’t know why I keep it around,” the cleric said with a sigh, because he was apparently fucking oblivious to all of this. “Just takes up space and food! But there aren’t many drillbeasts outside of Terr, and I need to find those Archive records if I am to properly serve you, Asher Alda.”
“It might heal faster and work better if you got it proper care,” I said dryly. “Else put the thing out of its misery and save yourself the grief.”
I didn’t want him to do that, but I could hardly make Krev Alda look like he cared about anything other than himself.
Luckily, the cleric balked.
“Kill it? A waste of effort! Drillbeasts are hardy, even if this pathetic thing is damaged and can’t drill right now. It’s those damned lightstones, like I told you! And it’s learned to recognize them, too-- practically afraid of them now. Look!”
He picked up a chunk of lightstone that had been sitting on one of the desks and waved it toward the drillbeast mockingly. The drillbeast made a mournful, scared noise and tried to curl up every smaller against the wall. I swallowed anger and bile as I fought to keep my face neutral, and the cleric looked up at me with an exasperated expression.
“See? Pathetic.”
He tossed the chunk of lightstone back toward the desk, and the drillbeast made another terrified squeaking noise.
That, it seemed, was the last straw.
“Oh, enough!” the cleric thundered. “I was throwing it away from you, idiot creature! Why do I bother keeping you around? You can’t do the one thing I need you to do! And I’m too far away from a useful specimen, so I have to put up with you anyway! By Mercedes!”
He wound back a hand and slapped the beast, hard, on its already-damaged snout. The wail the drillbeast made was so pained it made my chest ache just to hear it, but the cleric didn’t seem to care, because he slapped it a second time, and a third.
Just as he raised his hand for the fourth time, ready to deliver a fourth blow, my patience snapped. My hand shot out, and I grabbed his wrist and glared at him.
“That is enough,” I snarled.
Chapter 16
For a moment, I panicked.
Had I just completely blown my cover? Did this crazy cleric now know that I wasn’t Krev Alda, that I was only playing some weird double-bluff? I couldn’t just idly stand by and let this freak continue to beat an innocent creature, but I needed to figure out how to maintain this charade before the gears in his head started turning.
“I didn’t come here to watch you brutalize the wildlife,” I said in as harsh and cold a voice as I could manage. It was fairly easy, honestly, because this guy was a bastard. “I want to know what progress you made toward my goals. You know I have no patience for time-wasting.”
“Of course not, of course not,” the cleric mumbled, and despite the fact I still had a vise-like grip around one of his wrists, he shifted into a deep bow, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the obvious groveling.
Out of the corner of my eye, Zoie and Horus seemed similarly displeased, and I could see how the cat-woman was still drawn taut as a bowstring, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice.
“You are too generous, Asher Alda,” the cleric went on. “Truly, your designs are unparalleled, and the means about which you intend to see them brought to fruition--”
That was about three hundred percent more flowery than I was willing to put up with, and I let go of his wrist irritably.
“What in the Darkhells are you talking about?” I demanded crossly, and I was honestly a little relieved for the opportunity to vent some of my frustrations with this creep. Thankfully, Krev Alda had never been known for his forgiving disposition.
At my words, the cleric flinched, as if I’d hit him rather than just snapped at him.
“Are… are you not giving me a new drillbeast?” he asked, and his tone went from groveling to slightly hesitant as he looked up at me through his crop of dark, shaggy hair.
“Why in Aventoll would I do that?” I scowled. “So you can beat that one, too? So you can destroy its snout carelessly drilling through lightstone-rich sections of the caves? You said it yourself I did not specifically ask you to try and find the buried Archive records hidden by the Council and the Order, and so far all you have shown me is that this farce has wasted your time and diverted your focus.”
“But the Archive records could hold invaluable information about Aventoll before the Curse was set upon Eng!” the cleric insisted. “I didn’t lie to you, I truly believe they could be of use--”
“Knowledge may be power, but weapons win battles,” I snapped and interrupted the cleric entirely. It was actually a little bit fun to watch him panic and squirm. The bastard deserved it. “And so far you have shown me neither, only whispers of an Alemic conspiracy we have no means to prove!”
“Proof is such a-- such an overrated thing!” the cleric said quickly. “Rumors are where men and regimes are destroyed! You cannot kill ideas once they sprout. They root into the cracks and fester.”
“Then you had better hope I don’t get the ‘idea’ to kill you where you stand and save myself the trouble of listening about how else you have failed me,” I said as I raised a hand to my temple and began to rub at it like I was developing a migraine from having to deal with this man’s stupidity.
The cleric swallowed, and I took some small, petty pleasure in watching his Adam’s apple bob nervously.
“So… you are not here to give me the drillbeast egg the Brightwood Asher was given on Terr?” he asked me.
I worked to keep my face neutral. How the hell did this guy know about that? How far did his network of spies extend? I made a mental note to ask Amaya and Anwaar if clerics had any training or skills that would allow them to learn information from halfway around the world.
Truthfully, I didn’t know what happened to the drillbeast egg. It had been a gift from the Terrans, and one I’d happily accepted after I’d worked to try and calm the tensions between the Upper and Lower Echelons of the Island, as well as lessen the enormous inequality gap between the two groups. But after we’d left Terr, so much had happened, and I’d rather lost track of it. It was probably tucked away in one of the Manta ship’s many rooms. Maybe in six months, Rylan or Jenner would discover it again.
Not that it really mattered. Even if the egg was in my pocket at that very moment, there was no way I was giving it to this guy after seeing how he’d treated the first drillbeast.
“Why would I reward you when you have done absolutely nothing meriting any kind of reward?” I asked him, and my voice was cold as winter. “I’m not going to give you another creature to torment for fun, when that seems to be the only thing you spend your time doing down here. Cowed drillbeasts will not bring me any closer to achieving my ends!”
“Of course not,” the cleric said again, and he looked like he was about to return to the smarmy groveling, so I took a step back from him and folded my arms to broadcast how thoroughly out of patience I was.
“Currently, your reward is I have not separated your head from your shoulders,” I said. “If you expect to reap anything more interesting, I expect to see something of actual use.”
The cleric stared up at me with wide, dark eyes and then gave a firm nod, like he was steadying himself.
“Right,” he said, and he raised an arm toward one of the tunnels. “This way.”
Myself, Zoie, and Horus followed behind him and left the small cavern with the poor drillbeast behind. We walked through another tunnel that had clearly been made by the scrupulous Eng-folk and not haphazardly by an Alemic cleric, and since the cleric was facing away from us while leading the little procession, I dared to turn my head and look back at Zoie and Horus.
Both of them were bathed in the faintly greenish glow of the lightstones, which cast dramatic shadows across the planes of their faces. I could see clearly they both wore grim, determined expressions, which I found encouraging. Neither of them were strangers to a fight, and while I would have preferred for Zoie not to be here, given her condition, I couldn’t deny I was glad to have backup. Hopefully, my ruse would hold, and we wouldn’t need it, but I knew it was better to prepare for the worst than simply hope for the best.
The cleric eventually came to a stop before another cavern, and for a moment I wondered just how big this complex was. I hadn’t seen anything that really resembled a door or a barrier that would denote we were entering someone’s private home, but then I hadn’t seen anything much like a home at all. No beds, no kitchens, no places to relax. It had all been one long string of workshops.
The Eng-folk, I supposed, must have been big on collaboration. Their combined intellects must have been a real force to be reckoned with, and I could understand why the other Islands of Aventoll, and in particular the Order of Mercedes, might have been intimidated by that intellect.
I still didn’t agree with it, of course. Cursing an entire people to madness and savagery because you didn’t like the knowledge they had was, at minimum, petty as fuck.
“How far does your workshop extend?” I asked in as bored a voice as I could offer.
“Almost half of this entire section of the canyon!” the cleric answered eagerly, and I could see his posture relax as he no doubt assumed my question meant I wasn’t as irritated as I’d been earlier.
I was, but I also knew it would be easier to get information out of him if he felt at ease.
It would also be easier to kill him once his guard was lowered.
“The Engish have very communal workspaces-- or, they had very communal workspaces.” The cleric gave another one of those strange, high-pitched chuckles. “Their individual homes and private quarters were kept entirely separate from their workshops and libraries. It was only following the Curse and the voluntary exile of many of the people that they began to combine their intellectual pursuits with their leisure time. The Curse on Eng meant the Engish’s intelligence became firmly rooted in their cultural identity, and also academic practice became in itself a rebellion against the cowardice and fear of the other Peoples of the Islands.”
That, I could respect. The Eng-folk had been screwed over by the Order and the other Islands for being so curious and clever, so now they doubled down on being even more curious and clever as a middle finger to the people who’d tried to scare them out of it. Hopefully, once Shay had fully healed the Hearts of Aventoll, the Curse would be lifted automatically, or we would have found a way to lift it, because even just standing in the ruined cavern that had been overtaken by a crazy cleric, I could tell how passionate the Engish had been about the pursuits of knowledge. I wanted to see what an entire Island of Jenners could do for Aventoll.
Hell, maybe they’d even figure out electricity.
“I hope you’ve managed to put these incredible resources to good use, and haven’t just been indulging your own most childish impulses,” I said in a stern tone, and the cleric shook his head quickly.
“Absolutely not!” he cried out. “Truly, I think you will be very pleased with what I have managed to achieve. Of course, I am working off the incomplete notes of many Engish, notes long-ago abandoned, but I have nonetheless managed to put something together that will be extremely useful to you, Asher Alda!”
“Then stop blathering on about it and show me,” I said and folded my arms again.
“I mentioned earlier about how there might be a way to harness the Curse on Eng and use it the way the High Priestess used it against the Engish to begin with,” the cleric explained, and I was a little sickened by the eager way he spoke, because it was so similar to how Jenner spoke about something that fascinated him.
