Savage Legion Page 16

  She’s covered in leather and silk as black as pitch from top to bottom. The darkness of her tunic even swallows her entire neck. Her only truly resonant features are the eagle’s eye pendant adorning her chest and the bone-handled dagger politely concealed behind a length of her shoulder cape.

  “You say you’re alone in these towers?” Ginnix asks Lexi as the Ministry agent paces around the parlor.

  Lexi is seated formally on one of the lounges, Taru standing sentinel beside her.

  “Brio’s father occupied the other tower in his retirement until he passed away several years ago,” Lexi explains. “We shuttered most of it after the funeral to conserve. There was a small staff tending to this tower up till a month ago. I was forced to let them go. Now poor Taru is all that’s left to oversee everything.”

  “Forced, you say?”

  “I reallocated all Gen Stalbraid’s available assets to finding my husband. There simply wasn’t enough left to sustain a full-time staff.”

  Ginnix ceases her pacing, turning to face Lexi across the spacious, well-appointed room.

  “I’m confused, Te-Gen. The search for your husband has been fully funded and undertaken by Crache on your behalf and on behalf of your Gen.”

  “I felt additional resources were required.”

  “And have those resources yielded results?”

  “They have not.”

  “Then to say you were ‘forced—’ ”

  “Perhaps the word was poorly chosen. May we not allow ourselves to be bound up in semantics, please?”

  “Especially since you’ve yet to explain why you’re here,” Taru adds, a rare unsolicited statement.

  Lexi looks up at them, the shock quickly giving way to visible approval.

  “Your retainer?” Ginnix asks her.

  Lexi looks back at the Ministry agent and nods, quite proudly.

  “I cannot say I’ve ever approved of private retainers.”

  “And yet I do approve quite strongly of the point Taru has made,” Lexi fires back. “Why are you here? What is it that we can do for you?”

  Ginnix doesn’t answer at first. She’s still staring at Taru with open contempt. The gaze Taru offers her in return echoes the message in their hand wrapped around the hilt of their sheathed hook blade.

  Lexi doesn’t need to see the animosity between them; she can practically feel it, heating the very air.

  “What is your official title?” she asks Ginnix.

  “I don’t have one. I serve. That is who and what I am.”

  Though her answer is frustrating, Lexi’s question accomplishes her goal of drawing Ginnix’s attention away from Taru.

  “While that may be admirable on a philosophical level,” Lexi says, “I find it a wholly impractical way of organizing.”

  “I introduced myself as Ginnix because that is how you may address me as needed.”

  “Very well, Ginnix. Why are you here?”

  “We at the Protectorate Ministry place the highest possibly priority on this unprecedented attempt on your life and display of violence here in the heart of our nation.”

  Her mechanical tone only serves to raise the temperature of Lexi’s blood.

  “And what, may I inquire, has come from placing the highest priority on the targeted destruction of everything I know and love?”

  “Our initial findings point toward Sicclunan provocateurs.”

  Lexi has to be careful to measure her words, not letting her temper run away with them.

  “How could Sicclunans reach us in the Capitol? We have been told our entire lives that Crache’s enemies are few and scattered and a thousand miles away. That they are merely jealous dissidents envious of our way of life who seek to undermine it, and that we have long been on the verge of eradicating them. What you are saying speaks of a much broader conflict. Is this fight larger and closer to our doors than we have been led to believe?”

  Ginnix looks upon her wearily. “Of course not. The assassins themselves were no doubt hirelings, local dregs employed by a lone Sicclunan agent. They are a devious lot. We have shaken most of them out. However, a few obviously remain hidden here and there.”

  “What of the marks all over their flesh? These ‘hirelings’ that tried to kill me.”

  “A new gang organizing itself in our streets, possibly a fanatical faction worshipping the Five. We are investigating that, as well.”

  Taru, born and bred in the Bottoms where gangs are little more than temporary bands of rabble scrounging for food, stops just short of laughing.

  “But why?” Lexi demands. “Why would the Sicclunan government want to assassinate me, the wife of a middling statesman, let alone risk so much to do it? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Ginnix ignores the breadth of her reactions, remaining neutral.

  “What I tell you now was until very recently a closely held state secret, and may come as quite a shock to you. Your husband, Brio, was in fact an agent of the Protectorate Ministry. He worked clandestinely for the Ministry in an effort to secure the trust of Crache’s enemies working within the Capitol to undermine our nation.”

  Neither Lexi nor Taru know how to react to that. Taru looks down at their mistress, searching for some cue, but Lexi is silent and still.

  “As I said,” Ginnix repeats, “I know this will come as a shock to you—”

  Lexi bursts out laughing.

  It’s loud and unrefined and wholly inappropriate, and Taru stares down at her as if Lexi has launched into convulsions.

  Even Ginnix, the ghost attending her own funeral, appears taken aback.

  “I’m… I’m sorry,” Lexi manages through the fit, wresting it slowly under control. “Please, excuse me. It’s just… I feel as though it was yesterday the Gen Franchise Council, citing conclusive findings by your Ministry, attempted to declare my husband a traitor to Crache. Now, suddenly, he’s a hero of the nation working in the shadows to protect us from our enemies.”

  “Collaborating with those enemies was part of Brio’s assignment,” Ginnix says.

  That stamps out what’s left of Lexi’s laughing fit, leaving her pensive and more than a little uncertain.

  “You’re telling me… Brio…”

  “He was straddling both sides of the fence, as it were. It became necessary to paint him as a traitor for him to solidify the trust of the Sicclunans, who were beginning to grow suspicious of his motives. Making his treason a matter of public record was an extreme measure, but an undeniable one from their point of view.”

  “Then where is he now?” Lexi asks, very near hysterics. “Where is Brio now? Is he here, in Crache? Is he in Siccluna? Will he be there for weeks or months or years? Where is he?”

  Her voice is steadily rising, higher than Taru has ever heard it in such formal company.

  Taru leans down, placing a gauntleted hand on Lexi’s shoulder. “Te-Gen—” they begin quietly.

  “No!”

  Lexi shakes free of Taru’s hand, violently, rising to her feet.

  “I want to see my husband!” she all but screams at the Protectorate Ministry wraith.

  “Brio is dead,” Ginnix states flatly with all the warmth of a tombstone in winter.

  Those three words succeed where Taru failed, breaking Lexi free from her outburst.

  There’s even less emotion in Lexi’s voice when she says, “What happened?”

  “Sicclunan agents discovered his true allegiance. They murdered him for it.”

  “I want to see his body.”

  “Of course. We’re working even now to recover it… that is to say, him. Brio was killed near the Sicclunan front. It will take some time—”

  “I will see his body,” Lexi vows darkly. “None of this means anything until I do. Do you understand? Nothing you’ve said is worth a damn until I see my husband with my own eyes.”

  It’s unclear whether Ginnix is offended or disturbed, but Lexi’s words obviously resonate.

  “As I said, we will do all we can,�
� she reiterates carefully. “In the meantime, Ministry guards will be stationed in your cooperative for your assured safety.”

  “Te-Gen’s safety is already quite assured,” Taru informs her.

  Ginnix actually smiles. It’s a thin, joyless expression on her.

  “I should also inform you, Te-Gen,” she says, looking again at Taru while speaking to Lexi. “The Gen Franchise Council will be summoning you once more in a week’s time. You will receive official notice soon. You see, if the case is left open and you and your Gen are left free of consequence, Brio’s true loyalties will always be in doubt.”

  Lexi returns the smile, grimly. “So truth and law no longer have any place in this matter.”

  “Both are being temporarily subverted for the greater good. But I assure you, once Brio’s mission is complete, everything you will appear to have lost will be restored.”

  “Of course they will.”

  “I’ll take my leave of you, then, if you have no more questions.”

  “I have many questions,” Lexi says, “but I’ve gathered all the information from you I expect to.”

  “Very well, then.”

  The Ministry’s agent bows formally.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Lexi asks before Ginnix turns away from her. “How quickly one can go from servant of the state to enemy of the state to national hero?”

  “We are all what Crache needs us to be, Te-Gen,” Ginnix says. “Function is purpose, after all.”

  Lexi swallows whatever else she might have said, silently watching the woman’s black shoulder cape flutter away.

  “Believe none of it, Te-Gen,” Taru urges her after Ginnix is gone from the tower. “Not a single word.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then why, if I may ask, do you appear to be in such conflict?”

  “I cannot decide if that bitch and the rest of those black-clad spawn are responsible for everything that’s happened to my Gen, or if they are merely attempting to clean up the aftermath for someone else.”

  “How can we know?” Taru asks.

  Lexi realizes she’s been clenching her fist for the past several minutes, digging her nails painfully into the meat of her palms. She forces her knuckles to unlock and gently rubs her trembling hands over the front of her wrap, smoothing them until both the sting and the tremors subside.

  “We need help,” she says, finally. “Thankfully, our choices are very few. That will make it easier.”

  THE MESSENGER

  “ASHANA—”

  “My name is Evie,” she corrects Brio, urgently. “You have to call me that while we’re here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The Aegins arrested a drunken vagrant bar brawler named Evie. Laython crammed a blood coin down Evie the vagrant’s gullet.”

  She watches him slowly process this, no doubt hindered by the other major revelations that have very recently blindsided him.

  “We’ve all had our true selves stripped from us here,” he says. “That’s what they do. They don’t care who we really are. What difference does it make what you call yourself?”

  “You are proof that isn’t entirely true,” she reminds him. “They may try to take your identity from you here, but they abducted you precisely because of who you are, Brio. Treating us as Savages and appointing callous brutes to whip us into submission is a tactic. That doesn’t mean people smarter and more important than those brutes aren’t paying attention. They care who is here and for what reason. I’m choosing caution for now.”

  Brio opens his mouth to reply, but in the end, perhaps due to exhaustion more than anything else, he only nods silently. His eyes are wet and bloodshot. They flicker red in the light of the fire she’s fashioned from his pitiful burned log.

  Brio never was much use sleeping rough.

  She watches the ragged man she remembers as so crushingly handsome. Once, she lost everything she had because of him. Now she’s chosen to leave everything she knows behind for him. Evie is forced to consider the notion she’s either a hopeless glutton for punishment, or just an incredible devotee of symmetry.

  “Do you understand now?” she asks Brio.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” he says. “I mean… I understand where we are and what you’re saying, but… how are you here?”

  “I’ll explain, but first I need to have a look at this leg.”

  She kneels in front of him. The right leg of the filthy hemp pants he wears are already ripped and crusted with dried blood. She tears the rest of the stained material over his knee, exposing a deep gash that must stretch six inches down his calf. The wound is mostly black, and much of it is scabbed over. Evie knows the scabbing is only superficial, nothing but more dried blood. There’s no healing going on underneath.

  “Is it numb?” she asks, trying to keep her voice even.

  “I can feel my toes, but not much between my knee and my foot.”

  Evie says nothing else. She stares at the wound with eyes full of storm clouds.

  “Judging purely from your expression I take it my prognosis is not good,” Brio says, trying to sound playful, but the wavering in his voice betrays that utterly.

  “It’s already festering.” She frowns up at him, her eyes flashing harshly. “Did you even clean it out?”

  Brio actually laughs. It’s a hollow, mirthless sound.

  “With what?” he asks. “Clean wraps and fresh water are difficult to come by in this camp. They don’t even have a surgeon for Savages.”

  Evie’s eyes soften, just a little. “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Barely since the Revel. It appears to be the one time we’re treated like something resembling human beings. That courtesy does not extend to the cold camp. Food and water are doled out scarcely, and it seems to be first come, first served. We were watered and fed jerked duck on the road.”

  Evie nods. “Us too. Wait here. I’ll be back, okay?”

  His eyes widen, a desperate expression overtaking his face. “Where are you going?”

  She raises a hand. “Relax, Brio. All right? I’m used to being served last. I know how to make do.”

  Evie rests that placating hand on the knee of his injured leg. The desperation leaves his haggard features and his eyes soften on her. Brio covers her hand with both of his. Evie looks down at the tangle of their fingers, both relishing and resenting the falling sensation in her stomach the sight of it causes. She feels too much like the little girl who would’ve followed him anywhere, and Evie has no time for such saccharine flights. This isn’t a place for sentiment.

  She slips her hand from beneath his.

  “Just wait here,” Evie repeats. “I won’t be gone long.”

  Brio nods, twining his fingers atop his knee tightly to steady his hands.

  Evie holds his eyes reassuringly for a moment longer before rising from her knees and walking away, almost sprinting. She returns no more than ten minutes later, a cracked horn goblet in one hand and a bundle of drab but unstained rags in the other. A crooked and broken stick is balanced atop the goblet. Steam rises from the hunk of cooked meat skewered around the end of the stick. She kneels once more at his feet, placing the goblet on the ground.

  Brio leans forward, picking up the skewer and peering down at what looks like clean water filling the horn from which the goblet is fashioned. He examines the meat, the smell of it causing his mouth to water painfully.

  “What is this?” he asks, swallowing hard.

  “Just eat it,” Evie instructs him.

  She begins laying out the strips of cloth she’s collected on the boulder beside him.

  Brio bites gratefully into the scorched skin of the mystery meat.

  “How did you get all this?” he asks as he chews.

  Evie shrugs. “The Savage who had them was otherwise occupied.”

  “With what?”

  “His arm. It broke.”

  Brio looks away from her, grinning ruefully. “I see.”

  “
I need to clean this out and burn it,” Evie tells him, sounding dubious. “Even then, it’ll be by the grace of the outlawed gods that we don’t have to take your leg off.”

  Evie bunches a length of cloth in her hand and dips the end of it into the water, soaking it through.

  Brio watches her, his shoulders stiffening. “I should be frightened, I suppose, but I’m mostly amused you’re still invoking the God Stars at your age.”

  “I like the stars. I can see them. They’re always up there.”

  “The trouble you got us into as children, refusing to let go of those old symbols even when my father—”

  “Let’s not visit the past right now,” she says.

  Brio’s face drops. “All right.”

  “Everything I’m about to do is going to hurt,” she warns him.

  “I’m becoming used to it.”

  Evie begins cleaning his wound, wetting the dried flecks covering the gash with her cloth and wiping them away as gently as possible.

  Brio tenses, sucking air through his lips sharply, but he neither protests nor shrinks away.

  “How have you survived?” she asks, both to distract him and because every bit of information is useful to her in their current state. “How many other battles have you seen?”

  “Two. Both were further north from here. The first was little more than a skirmish, an outpost, a few dozen soldiers at most. We barely lost a Savage to the battle. The Skrain just watched. The second was a siege, what I take was the last Sicclunan stronghold halting our advancement. They sent the Savages over the wall first.”

  Evie is already on her second strip of doused cloth and there’s still muck to dig from his wound. She pauses and looks up at him, genuinely taken aback.

  “You? Scaled a castle wall?”

  Brio tries to laugh, but what he comes out with is more like a sigh. “I tried. I made it about halfway up when I felt something slash through my leg. It was an ax blade. I don’t know if it was Sicclunan or Savage, but someone dropped it. I lost my grip on the rungs and fell. Fortunately the ground was mostly mud. I decided I much preferred wallowing there. Again, I got lucky. We took the castle in the first attack.”

  “I doubt very much it was fully reinforced. The Sicclunans had to have known that their line was folding. They probably left a skeleton battalion in the keep to buy time for them to fall back and establish a new one. The force the Savages put me with faced south of here seemed like a half-hearted effort as well.”