The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 417

Chapter 417

ALARIC MAER

I reread Lady Caera of Highblood-bloody-Denoir’s letter for the third time, unsure if it was the alcohol that made the words so insensible or if it was just what she was asking me to do. The bar below was quiet—a sign of the times—which actually made it harder to focus, if anything. I needed noise, movement, action—distraction. I missed the boy, although I would have never admitted it to anyone out loud. He was good for a distraction.

Heaving a great sigh that ended with a foul-tasting belch, I turned the parchment over and leaned back in the rickety wooden chair, glaring around the small room as if it had been insulting toward my mother.

I was back in Aramoor City in Etril, only having narrowly escaped from Itri in Truacia, where I’d been helping to organize the smuggling of weapons and artifacts along the coast and up the Redwater.

A task much more aligned to my skills and interests, I thought darkly, glancing at the back of Lady Denoir’s parchment.

But our smuggling efforts had been successful enough to draw the attention of Bivran of the Dead Three, new retainer to the Dominion of Truacia, resulting in a sunk ship, dozens dead, and me running like my life depended on it.

“Just like the old days, huh?” a shadow said from my periphery.

I didn’t look straight at her, so she moved around the edge of the room and leaned against the wall right in front of me. “You used to live for this kind of thing.”

I scoffed, looking everywhere except at the vision of the woman, whose golden hair framed her sharp face and the hardened brown eyes that seemed to look into me.

Still, I saw as her lips turned up wryly. “You should acknowledge your commanding officer when she’s speaking to you, soldier.”

“Not my commander anymore,” I mumbled, closing my eyes and leaning forward to rest my head on the small desk. “I’m no soldier, and you’re dead.”

She laughed lightly. “All those years trying to get yourself killed in the Relictombs don’t change who you are, Al. You’re still an operator. That’s why you can’t stay out of the fight, no matter how hard you try. Sides may have shifted, but your purpose remains the same.”

I rocked my forehead back and forth, enjoying the feel of the cool wood on my hot skin. “You’re wrong. I have changed. I’m not the man I was when you knew me.”

She snorted. “And who could know you better than me? I’m in your head, Al. All that remorse and regret, that hatred and rage that burns like the core of Mount Nishan and makes you feel like if you don’t do something your bones might just vibrate to dust—I can feel all of it.”

I opened my eyes as I straightened up and glared at the vision. “You know what they did. You know why I walked away. I’d string Vritra guts from Onaeka to Rosaere if I could, but neither of us could ever be more than a part of their machine in the end. Even as an ascender, it was all for their benefit at the end of the day. The murderous lizards even got you, didn’t they?”

She strode across the room, moving like a shadow, and put her hands on the desk, leaning down to pin me with her steely gaze. “I made my choices. What happened changed my life just as much as it did yours, and you know that. But…” She hesitated, then stood, turned around, and leaned against the edge of the desk, her back to me. “We both could have done better.”

Another figure appeared in the shadows at the corner of the room, beyond my old commander. No, not a single figure. The silhouette of a woman holding a child in her arms…

My hand trembled as I scrambled for a half-full bottle of amber spirits from one of the desk shelves. After clawing at the cork for a few seconds with weak fingers, I gripped it in my teeth instead, pulling it out and spitting it onto the floor. My eyes closed as the cold glass touched my lips. “Get out of my head, ghosts,” I muttered into the open bottle, then tipped it back.

The satisfying burn of the alcohol trailed down my throat and into my belly, where it radiated out to warm the rest of my body.

I focused on that comforting feeling for a long moment, then half-opened one eye, peeking out at the small room. The visions were gone.

“Must be getting old,” I mumbled, giving the bottle a shake. “Sobering up too quickly these days…” Tipping the bottle back again, I drained the remainder of its contents, then set it down heavily on the floor behind the desk.

But I barely had time to do more than sigh with relief before someone was knocking lightly on the door.

“Damn,” I grumbled, grabbing Caera’s letter and stuffing it into an inside pocket of my coat, carelessly crumpling it.

“Sir, your…guests have arrived,” a growling voice said from the other side of the door.

“Yeah, yeah, send them in,” I grumbled.

With a moan, I stood and stretched out my back, which ached from spending too much time in rickety old chairs like this one. I rubbed my hands vigorously over my face and through my beard, then placed them on the desktop, copying the vision’s pose from only a few moments earlier.

The door opened, and a handful of cloaked figures slipped in before closing it once again.

The first stepped forward and pulled back his hood immediately, revealing a carefully groomed noble with dark hair and a goatee. My brows rose of their own accord.

“Highlord Ainsworth. I hadn’t expected you to come personally—”

“What in the abyss is happening out there?” he snapped, puffing up like an angry bog hopper. “We’ve received nothing but assurances from Scythe Seris, who is still holed up behind her shield in the south, while the rest of Alacrya remains vulnerable to the High Sovereign’s reprisals. I have yet to see any tangible benefit of the risks my highblood have undertaken.”

Behind him, the other figures, four in all, also lowered their hoods. To Ector’s right, a nervous looking Kellen of Highblood Umburter was making a show of examining his fingernails, while to the left, Sulla of Named Blood Drusus, head of the Ascenders Association in Cargidan and an old friend of mine, was looking on with a raised brow. Then there was a surprise, a girl with golden hair trimmed short, the brightness of it highlighting the dark freckles across her face: Lady Enola of Highblood Frost, unless I was very much mistaken.

The final member of this strange group was one of my people, who had shifted to the side slightly, putting room between her and the others.

“And now,” Ector continued, his face growing slightly red, “Seris has asked us to directly expose ourselves in a way that will almost certainly destroy us. Does she even have a plan, or is it simply one desperate action after the next?”

I waited a moment, letting the highblood vent his frustration. Internally, I agreed with him. As eager as I was to strike at the Vritra in any way I could, it seemed to me that our efforts were far too small to do any lasting damage or pose a threat to the High Sovereign’s absolute control over our continent.

Still, I had nothing to lose. But for men like Ector, this rebellion was a constant balancing act between fighting for a life without Vritra control and consigning his entire blood to a painful and long-lasting execution.

Not that I have any sympathy for these preening highbloods, I reminded myself.

“I’ve only just been informed of this new course of action myself,” I admitted, unsure what this highblood expected me to do or say about it. “It’s a risk, I’ll admit, but not outside of your highblood’s abilities.”

As Ector ground his teeth, my young spy, an unblooded mage named Sabria, cleared her throat. “Highlord Ainsworth, excuse me sir. Alaric, the two water-attribute emblem-bearers we hired were able to retrieve several of the crates lost from the last shipment from Itri, including the interference artifacts.”

I slapped the desk and grinned at Ector. “See? That’ll help. And so will these,” I added, pulling a wad of fabric out of a basket behind the desk.

After catching it as I tossed it over to him, Ector let the fabric unroll, revealing a set of robes in the purple and black coloring of Stormcove Academy with their cloud and lightning emblem emblazoned across the chest. “What in Vritra’s name am I supposed to do with this?”

“Put it on,” I said, tossing a set to Kellen, Enola, and Sulla as well. “In about thirty minutes, a large group of Stormcove Academy supporters will be marching past this bar on their way to an exhibition tournament between Stormcove and Rivenlight Academies. A handful of our people will be in the crowd. You’ll leave with them, blending in until you can each safely make your way to a tempus warp.”

“Enough with both the complaints and the unnecessary espionage stuff,” Lady Frost said, stepping forward to be on a level with Ector, who she was almost as tall as.

Ector’s jaw clenched as he bit back whatever response had jumped to mind. Personally, between the two of them, I found Enola more intimidating, despite how young she was. And even though, as highlord, Ector outranked her, Highblood Frost was more powerful than Highblood Ainsworth.

“Promises were made. Half of the reason my father agreed to join this insane venture is because I convinced him that Professor Grey—sorry, Ascender Grey was worth it. Lady Caera of the Denoir Highblood assured us he was involved in this, but we haven’t seen or heard from him since the Victoriad.”

“Well, there was that attack in Vechor,” Kellen said with an irritating shrug.

I eyed the girl curiously. Since saying goodbye and sending him through that Relictombs portal, I’d learned much about what Grey—Arthur Leywin, Lance of the Tri-Union forces of Dicathen, I reminded myself—had done at Central Academy and the Victoriad, as well as what he’d accomplished in the war before ending up on our shores. Would she be as eager to follow his leadership if she knew who he really was? I wondered.

But that wasn’t for me to decide. Scythe Seris Vritra would determine when the people got to know that little detail, or perhaps she would wait for Arthur himself to make it known.

Regardless, much of our support hinged on the high and named bloods’ interest in him.

“He’s the most wanted damned person in Alacrya, isn’t he? You’re not likely to find him strolling about in broad daylight where any old Scythe or Sovereign can catch sight of him,” I grumbled.

“But he is out there?” she asked, a note of desperation creeping into her otherwise steady timbre. “Rumors are beginning to spread. Rumors that he has been captured. Some people—even those who were there—insist that he never escaped the Victoriad at all.”

Kellen let out a little laugh. “Of course they’d say that. It’s rather difficult to maintain the illusion of absolute control if someone is actively evading said control, isn’t it?”

Enola turned to glare at him, wiping the smug smile off his face.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose between my callused fingers, already feeling the need for another drink. Vritra help me that I got saddled with these highbloods. “He’s out there.”

Sulla, in the dangerous position of being a named blood among highbloods, had carefully avoided interrupting the conversation so far, but he seemed to see his opportunity. “The Ascenders Association has been carefully maneuvering resources in preparation for a call to action. Grey is well-liked and respected among us, although, of course, bringing in new ascenders is still slow and dangerous work—the wrong word in the wrong ear could lead to the entire association being disbanded—but we have a sizable force prepared, along with a significant investment of resources—weapons, artifacts, and the like. All of whom have rallied to his banner.”

I couldn’t help but shake my head, curious what Arthur would think about becoming the rallying cry of this Alacryan rebellion against the Vritra.

Uncomfortable, I’d wager, I thought, amused. But not as uncomfortable as I am.

“Just like in Vechor, Grey will make his presence known when it suits him,” I said, fully aware that I was talking out my ass. “For now, we all take our marching orders from Scythe Seris Vritra. Highlord Ainsworth, I can’t speak to the purpose behind her request of your highblood, but I have been instructed to put my entire network of informants and operators at your service. Orchestrating the necessary acquisitions, manipulating the systems in place, and even absorbing the fallout, should there be any.”

Ector looked at me as if I’d just suggested I’d be his concubine for the evening. “While I’m sure your resources are sufficient for what they are, I don’t see how you can assist me, given that this is my highblood’s direct responsibility.”

I shrugged off the insult. A thousand worries hung like knives over my head, and this highlord’s respect—or lack there of—hardly even rated.

Sabria, though, was having none of it. “Oh, I’m sorry Highlord Ainsworth, is there something about this whole rebelling-against-the-gods-themselves thing that isn’t living up to your expectations? What exactly has your blood sacrificed to be here right now? Because I’ve lost three fucking friends this week alone to loyalist soldiers.”

Ector looked disdainfully down his nose at the girl. “Perhaps you and your friends should be better at your jobs, then.”

“How dare you—”

“Enough!” I snapped, staring Sabria down. “You forget yourself. This bickering serves no purpose except to waste time and reduce our readiness. If we’re done seeing who can piss the farthest and least accurately, let’s continue on with the true purpose of this meeting.”

The others—three highblood nobles, a named blood ascender, and an unblooded orphan—went silent, and all attention turned to me. Life is a bitterly unfunny joke, I thought to myself. One that drags on and on, so that by the end of it, you’ve forgotten where it started and what the punchline was supposed to be. I took a drag from my hip flask, heedless of the looks this received—especially from the highbloods—and launched into the details of the instructions I had received.

It took the better part of twenty minutes for Ector and I to get on the same page. Highblood Umburter’s assistance wasn’t strictly necessary, but would make several aspects of the plan a hell of a lot easier. I wasn’t entirely sure why Seris had invited the Frosts, except perhaps to keep Ainsworth in line, and maybe force Highlord Frost’s hand. He’d been reluctant to take any real risk so far, but I would say putting his great-granddaughter—the shining star of his highblood—right in the thick of things showed he was ready to be involved.

That, or he was a sadistically cold-hearted bastard.

As for Sulla, my network and the Ascenders Association tied Seris’s whole operation together, and we nearly always had a higher-ranking official involved in these clandestine meetings. I suspected Sulla had come himself for the same reason Ector and young Lady Frost had: they were getting nervous.

“Better get those uniforms on,” I said, nodding to the bundles of cloth each of them still held. “Only a few minutes now until the procession arrives, and then you’ll need to be quick.”

There was a moment of silence as they each pulled on their disguising robes.

“Alacric?” Sabria asked, cocking her head and looking askance at the door.

“Hm?”

“Does it seem quiet to you?”

I focused through the low-grade hum in my ears, listening for the normal clinking of glasses on the bartop or scraping of stools over the much-abused floorboards. But Sabria was right, the bar below was utterly silent.

“Shit, time to—”

The door ripped inward, exploding in a storm of shrapnel that dissipated against a shield, rapidly conjured by Kellen.