Game of Souls Read online

  Other folk awaited their turn on the mostly broken cobblestones near the woman. For many, when the soldiers took their children, their expressions would match hers. Desperation clung to them like a dark cloak. They pleaded, tears streaming down their cheeks, unheard prayers slipping from their lips.

  A scant few were hopeful. Hopeful their child wouldn’t be chosen. Or that their child would be.

  Gloved fists clenched, Keedar closed his eyes and sucked in a long, slow breath of the Smear’s foul air. The image of that mother and the others like her would be imprinted in his mind for some time. It would bring nightmares to join those he already suffered. Nightmares of his father dead on the ground, golden scales appearing on his skin as Keedar stood over him with silver scales sprouting from his own arm and face. No, that would never happen. It was only a dream. When he gazed down on the square once more, he was calmer, but not by much.

  In respect to people like this mother, he wore his worst rags. The clothing smelled of the folk who once owned them, mingled with his mustiness and sweat. A patchwork quilt of memories. A recollection of those souls lost since the day his mother gave her life so he wouldn’t share their fate. Ever since he could sneak out onto Kasandar’s streets on his own, he’d gathered the cast off clothing, the discarded pain, mementos too agonizing for parents to keep.

  Under a midday sun whose warmth didn’t seem to grace them, people huddled in a mass below him and farther up the lane, many in garb similar to his own, awaiting their turn with an examiner. For today was the Day of Accolades. The Smear’s residents presented the king his due. Glorious King Jemare who made certain the Kasinian Empire thrived. And with it, so did its people.

  Except those in the Smear.

  The thought of the king, of the folk in the Smear suffering, made Keedar grind his jaw. People might laud the king for the advances in society, for the thriving lives of the middle and upper class, but this … this in square, the Smear itself, was the true canvas on which King Jemare and the monarchs before him should be judged. Their work was drawn in blood and misery.

  These people gave of themselves but received little in return. Once, every two years, by order of a royal decree several hundred years old, they surrendered more. If one were to be so bold as to ask the nobility, they would reply that the gift the Smear’s residents got for their sacrifice was one of life, as meager as it was.

  This was a tribute of souls, of babes, of those too young to protest, to offer resistance, to understand their plight. In the citadel of Kasandar, ancient custom was like the rising and setting of the sun: inevitable, a routine on which the city thrived much like the rest of the Empire.

  Keedar dreamed of the day things would be different. If his people were truly descendants of the fabled Dracodar with silver or golden scales, power to have once ruled the known world, when would they stand up for themselves? When would this oppression end? He’d heard nobles tell stories as if the Dracodar were monsters that came in the night to enslave, murder, eat the dead, and steal children. The only people he had ever witnessed do anything of the sort were the nobility themselves.

  Once, long before he understood, Keedar wondered why the Smear’s residents contributed to the Day of Accolades. The answer lay in the leather-armored men and women who stood guard over the proceedings: the King’s Blades. Another squad of them marched toward the square, the cadence of their booted footsteps so synchronous it was akin to listening to a drumbeat. People on the street, regardless of their heritage or their position in society, made way for the Blades. In turn, these warriors accepted it as their due.

  For those children chosen, this was their fate. To serve in Kasinia’s armies, to become among the elite, to have songs sang of them should they fall as heroes, to have a chance for a better life. Which mother or father wouldn’t want such a thing if they’d lived—no—if they’d survived and suffered within the Smear’s shadowy, rodent and garbage infested streets?

  My mother for one.

  Despite her decision and his father stating the Blades were a travesty, Keedar often thought of what it would have been like to become one of them. To serve. To die with honor. To live never having to scrounge, not needing to despair over the next meal, or sell one’s body, or sit on some corner begging for alms, or fear a knife in the dark. Such a chance was lost to him, as fleeting as the wind that blew the wisps of his sandy hair across his face. If an examiner discovered him now, Keedar was as good as dead or worse. So, from his vantage on the rooftop, he continued to watch, agonizing over the help he wished he could offer those who wanted to raise their own children, who cherished the idea of freedom, who knew the promised life was an illusion, a deception.

  Keedar harbored no misconception of his ability to relieve their torment. Although he was the son of a gifted father and mother, it was more a curse than anything else. He was small for his age, blade-slim, not unlike many of his peers in the Smear. A more pious young man might pray to the Gods for his people’s deliverance but not Keedar. The Gods were as likely to help as he was to call on the clouds overhead to break and cause rain to fall. May the hells take the Gods. He didn’t cringe in the slightest at having cursed the deities for their worshippers, the wisemen, did the brunt of the work below.

  Dressed in red and blue robes, the wisemen shuffled among the folk, peering at the babies lying on blankets before each parent, and writing their findings in a small book. The insignia on their robes—a ten-pointed star inside a circle with another circle at its center—represented that which Keedar despised and loved. It was the ancient sign of the ten Gods, the pantheon of the Dominion, but it also stood for the skill that kept him alive. How ironic.

  Once the wisemen completed their inspection of a row, they passed the notes they made to a crier. This little man, all sinew and bones, announced the names, his voice carrying above the parents’ wails. Guards stepped forward to take the children listed.

  More than one parent collapsed. Some clutched at the soldiers cloaks, grabbed their booted feet, begged for them not to take their child. A spear butt knocked them off. Others clasped their hands in prayer but made sure not to appear too exultant over their children being spared. Not surprisingly, a few who had been refused, yelled for a guard, offering up their babies.

  Keedar despised those latter folk the most. Yet he didn’t hate them.

  “Why, Father? Why do they do this,” Keedar said in response to the near-silent footsteps that crept up behind him.

  Delisar grunted at having been sensed. “Because men are monsters. Power is the whip that drives them. For a taste, they will sink to new lows.”

  “Why do we stand by and do nothing?”

  “It is the way things have to be … for now.”

  “You’ve said the same every year since I was seven,” Keedar snapped. “A promise of changes to come, and yet the Consortium sits idly by and does nothing to free the people who protect them. What’s the point of the guilds if they do little to make life easier?” Keedar could not help the way he felt, the doubts he harbored, even if he wanted. The guilds profited too much from the Smear. Could he blame them? He asked himself that question regularly. Not once did he say yes. After all, the Smear’s people made up the guilds. Membership was a way out for many.

  “I’ll say again … patience.” Father became silent for a moment, his gaze solemn. “None of us should ever end up in a box,” he muttered under his breath.

  Keedar opened his mouth to speak, but Father’s upheld hand cut him off. Delisar’s amber eyes became golden rocks, his hairless jaw hardened. In that moment, he changed into the mix of unyielding parent and hard-hearted leader of the Shipmen guild.

  “What would you have us do? Attack them?” Father pointed to the Blades. Whether they held spear or sword or stood bare-fisted, they were no less deadly. “Does your memory of the Night of Blades fail you?” Father’s voice rose a little, heated, “Yes, you were three, but I hear you at night, whimpering, crying out for your Mother. Until we can stand agai
nst them and win, we must move carefully, in secret, plotting each step as if it were our last, because it just might be. The king must get his due even if he does not get what he desires.” One arm quivering at his side, Father’s fist opened and closed, opened and closed. Delisar inhaled long and slow. “Patience,” he said softly, “the time will come.”

  Father’s mention of Mother brought memories swarming into Keedar’s head. Heat, flames, scales, his mother’s voice as she cackled, the smell of blood.

  A man’s yell snapped Keedar’s attention to the plaza. The entire square grew silent except for the brief howl of a swirling wind.

  Rags whipped by the gale, the man held a knife in one hand raised above his head in the act of stabbing. The wiseman who he attacked looked on with as much concern as a stone. The man continued to scream, arm straining down, but not inching any closer.

  A Blade stepped in front of the wiseman, one gauntleted hand extended, fingers spread wide. A moment later, the attacker’s arm hurtled down, came within half a foot of striking the soldier, and then rebounded. The knife shattered.

  Keedar didn’t need to hear the snap to know the man’s arm broke. The awkward angle at which it hung, the bones jutting out from the tangled red mess of his elbow, told its own story. The attacker crumpled to the ground.

  The Blade bent on one knee over the man’s whimpering form. Slowly, he raised his hand above his head. A glow spread around his fist.

  Keedar looked away, but he could not plug his ears to the sickening crunch.

  “Patience,” Father repeated. “Remember all you see, store it. Our time will come.”

  Into the Smear

  Winslow Cardiff was tired of waiting. Ever since he was a child his father had promised him a chance to prove himself. Year after year, he dealt with the excuses, the reasons why he could not train with the King’s Blades. And every two years, he watched as mere babies were chosen on the Day of Accolades. Their learning began as soon as they could walk.

  Still Count Cardiff continued to lie to him. For that is what those denials were: lies. And not even well-crafted ones, simple denials meant to dissuade an overzealous child. Time and again, Winslow had analyzed the words, the expressions, wanting to believe, but his instincts, and more importantly his soul, told him they were filled with deception. He’d learned to listen to both as he’d grown to wake with the rising of Mandrigal casting its golden glow across the sky.

  He did not care if the dregs in the Smear were descendants of the storied Dracodar. He possessed some skill in soul magic too as his tutors had proved. Not as much as others claimed the dregs did, but it was there nonetheless. No one could be recognized as a noble if they lacked such a blessing. So why were these commoners, criminals, diseased miscreants of society, given a chance to become a Blade before the nobility? Why did he have to go through the Trial of Bravery while they had one of the greatest honors handed to them? He growled under his breath.

  Count Cardiff had yet again refused him the chance to take the trial last year at fifteen, but he was sixteen now, a man. The hair growing under his chin confirmed it. He would no longer allow his father to bar him from his goal. After the Day of Accolades the year before, he would not wait for it to come again and witness the dregs acquire what should rightfully be his blessing. His apprenticeship would start well before then. He would see to it. The choice was his and his alone.

  “Are you sure of this?” Gaston asked from where he stood on the other side of the tiny alley. He looked ridiculous in his disguise meant to copy one of the Smear’s dregs in ill-fitting, dirty clothes.

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,” Winslow declared. He had dressed similarly to his friend, but unlike Gaston he’d practiced this for weeks. No one would know the difference.

  “Is my face dirty enough?” Gaston smeared some more dirt on his cheeks, rubbing it in.

  Winslow chuckled. “You look like a beggar.”

  “Perfect, then,” his friend said with a smile. Gaston’s expression became serious, one of the few times he actually looked his eighteen years rather than a skinny youth of thirteen. “Do you think anyone will actually attack us?”

  “If it appears they might, we simply reveal who we are. They wouldn’t dare touch a noble.” Even as he said the words, Winslow had his own doubts. His mother had died in the Smear giving birth to him, right after she’d tried to save his older brother during the trial. Guild members had beaten her bloody. He despised them for it but hated them more for the privileges the Day of Accolades provided. “Besides, we’re both trained swordsmen.” He touched the weapon’s hilt hidden by his cloak.

  “You know we could simply do like the others … go near the Smear but not actually cross into it. That still counts as part of the test.”

  “When have you heard of anyone being accepted as an apprentice who did the trial that way?”

  “According to the records in the Grand Library, a century ago, King Jemare’s son, Joaquin.”

  “Whose son and when?”

  Gaston opened his mouth and then closed it.

  “Precisely,” Winslow said.

  He stared out across Deadman’s Gap, the street closest to the Smear on this side of Kasandar. A market made up of ramshackle stalls and storefronts spread before him. The homes and buildings hugged each other here and within the Smear more so than in any other place in the citadel. Even at this distance the reek of garbage and clogged drains tainted the air. It smelled like death. Mired in perpetual shadow, alleys and lanes crisscrossed the area, so tight they could barely fit a man, much less two. If the sun really was the God, Mandrigal, he’d turned his back on the Smear. No wonder the dregs were a lawless, Godless people.

  “To ensure we aren’t denied, we must go through the Smear,” Winslow said, hoping he sounded braver than he felt.

  “What if we fail, Wins. Have you considered that?”

  “We won’t.” Failure had not crossed his mind. He would pass this test. “This time next month, we’ll be apprentice Blades.”

  “You, will be, not I. I’m only here to keep you out of trouble.”

  “And a fine job you’re doing too.”

  Gaston had no love for physical combat. Even when Count Cardiff had forced them both to learn the sword, he’d resisted. It was something to do with his fragile body and dislike for blood. He’d much rather dive into the rumors, games, and political intrigue that almost every noble appeared to have been swaddled in from birth. Yet, for the sake of Winslow, he had learned. Winslow respected his friend for that. He would have done the same himself.

  “When our fathers hear of this, they won’t be pleased,” Gaston said.

  “It won’t be the first time we have disappointed them.”

  They smiled at each other. On the Ten Hills, they were known for their pranks. Not that they had attempted one in the past year, but certain things remained with people. The gutseed in the punch at one of the balls had been genius. Several hundred nobles stinking up the air with their farts. Counts Cardiff and Rostlin had been red-faced. Winslow’s smile became a grin.

  His father had used that act as an example to show why Winslow was not ready to become a Blade. The following months were spent learning of Far’an Senjin—the Game of Souls—and the political maneuvering associated with the major noble houses on the Ten Hills. A subject Winslow found beyond boring. Magic and battle, now, that piqued his interest, excited him. None more so than watching the Blades conjure swords, make their bodies as hard as granite, or move so fast they became a blur. He dreamed of achieving those feats.

  “You do realize we might come across someone adept in soul magic,” Gaston said as if reading his thoughts.

  “Yes, but it’s a slim chance at best.” The mention of it grated at Winslow’s insides. “They will take care not to reveal themselves if any have skill in the arts. Over the last few years not many have shown the ability for much more than the basics.” His father believed the dregs were hiding the gifted a
mong them, but Winslow begged to differ. The Gods had finally culled the talent from them. Deservedly so.

  “I pray you’re right.” Gaston made the circular sign for the Dominion over his heart.

  “When am I ever wrong?” Winslow winked at Gaston to ease his friend’s worry.

  “You’ll be in my debt when this is over.”

  “Drinks and women on me then … at Jarina’s Hands when we’re done.”

  Gaston smiled. “Any girl I wish?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why are we still standing here?”

  Winslow chuckled. When he gazed across Deadman’s Gap once more, his merriment subsided. Enough people had gathered in the dreg’s market. No one would be able to pick out the two of them among the crowd. “Act normal. Remember, these people are beneath us. We have nothing to fear.”

  Taking a deep breath, he stepped from the corner. With each stride his heart rate sped up, and his stomach tied itself in knots. There was no retreat now. This moment was his, and he would bask in the glory that would come with the trial’s completion. No one and nothing could take that away from him.

  What Cannot Be Seen

  The two boys didn’t belong to the Smear. As Keedar watched them from his favorite spot on the rooftop, that much was clear. They stuck out like a pair of unwashed urchins among royalty at a ball. To an untrained eye, their simple shirt and trousers matched most commoners, not unlike his own garb, but he knew what to look for. Their attire’s elbows and knees lacked the correct amount of wear; their shoes had a little too much shine; they walked with their backs a bit too straight. Only guild members or nobles would carry themselves with any hint of pride or swagger near the Smear’s streets. These two were definitely not the former. Not with the way they cast an occasional furtive glance around them. Also, the grime on their faces was not natural. What gave them away more than anything else was their hair: well-oiled, combed, too clean.

  With a groan, Keedar washed his gloved hand through his tangled, sandy locks. Damn you nobles and your silly challenges. Why does this have to happen on my watch?