Heads turned to watch as the three wikkan escorted Riot in chains through the crowded streets of Helgans Rest. The remnants of defeated regiments and battalions were crammed into the city like rats in a barrel. Screaming children ran down the crooked lanes past merchants, pedlars, washerwomen and armorers. All of them part of the human detritus, pushed ahead of the advancing Mazral army.

  They entered a towering building with a domed roof. Inside, raised benches curved around the walls of a vast chamber, allowing those seated to look down on the proceedings.

  Currently, the chamber was deserted, save for a tall woman leaning against the large table that dominated the center of the space. She wore her long black hair tied back, highlighting the sharp angles of her face that looked to be carved from cold marble. The studded leathers she wore said mercenary, but their quality said noblewoman, and the deep olive skin marked her as hailing from the eastern Tarian kingdoms. A resistance leader perhaps? Or a spy.

  Riot was pushed into the solitary chair that faced the table and his chains were passed through an iron ring set in the stone floor.

  “Outside, no one enters,” Ritta Kerne instructed the two wikkan girls who left, pulling the large doors closed behind them.

  “Natalia Quinn, meet Sergeant Riot,” Kerne said, taking a seat at the table.

  The Tarian woman's eyes narrowed. Riot had heard of faces that launched a thousand ships, but this one looked like it had boarded and scuppered at least a dozen, sending their crews down to the murky depths of the ocean. “This is the one who activated the hedron?” she asked, disbelief clear in her voice.

  “Don’t underestimate him, he’s a survivor, aren’t you Nathanial? The last man, they call him. Ninety days in a siege, and he was the only one still breathing when they opened the gates. Of course he was younger then.”

  “It was ninety-three days,” Riot growled.

  The dead rot fast in a hot summer.

  The food ran out in the first week, so they ate the horses, then the dogs, then the cats. Then they hunted rats.

  One morning Ensign Rawlings threw himself into the well with his pockets full of rocks and his corpse fouled the water.

  Soon none had the strength to patrol. But they didn’t need to defend the walls anyway. The besieging regiments knew there was a sickness inside and they barred the gates from the outside.

  Less and less woke each morning, and some disappeared entirely. Riot thought they had thrown themselves from the walls in desperation. But then Lincoln went missing and he was the last man left.

  Hardly a man at all really. Nineteen and looking like a skeleton raised back to life by the Arcane. He searched the depths of Ivansrook Castle for rats, thinking the cold darkness would be his tomb.

  Their commander, Alric Rook had forbidden them to go in this area. But down in the lowest chambers, Riot found that all this time they had been fighting those outside, when there had been another enemy within.

  Riot shook the memories from his mind. “I thought this was supposed to be a trial?”

  “We’re a little early, and I have a few questions about this.” Kerne reached into her pocket and drew out the small hedron, the weak sunlight flashing on the flat glass panels. “I might not have a chance after your officers are done with you.” The hedron made a faint click as Kerne placed it on the table. “This was stolen from the Arcanum of Volos, and a week ago I pried it from your hand. How did it come into your possession?”

  Had it only been a week? It felt like a month or more. Riot tried to recall what had happened when he had opened the hedron, but his mind was filled with empty spaces.

  “This is a waste of time. Either he’s lost his mind or he insults us.” Natalia Quinn glared at him with her arms crosses, speaking with the condescension that seemed to be bred into the higher classes.

  “Sergeant Riot hasn’t lost anything. Apart from his name, though most are just mispronouncing it,” Kerne said.

  Riot felt a creeping feeling on the back of his neck. They were soldiers’ instincts, and right now they were shouting at him to retreat.

  “How do you know Gerrard Price?” Kerne asked.

  Riot considered his options and found that there weren't many. The only thing anyone in the four corners of the continent agreed on, was that you couldn’t trust witches, but you could bargain with them. Even an unfair deal might keep him alive, which was better than the alternative. “What’s in it for me?” he asked.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  The corners of Kerne's mouth turned up slightly. “If you tell us what you know, I will tell you what to do to save yourself from the noose.”

  A fair trade, although he was sure he didn’t have anything more of interest that they hadn’t already wheedled out of Ruddle. “I don’t know Price. He was hiding in a farmhouse when we got there.”

  “How did you come into possession of the hedron?” Quinn pressed him.

  “Price was too smart to run without money. I figured he’d hidden it somewhere, but when I looked, I found the hedron instead, and then the Faelen came.”

  “Tarir-dal, a High Faelen. Unusual to see them using their power.”

  “He used it well enough. He brought down the whole damn building on our heads.”

  “And you, in turn, activated the hedron. You must have known you would likely die,” Kerne said.

  Riot recalled the searing heat that had run rampant just under his skin, and as if in response, the wound on his hand began to ache. “It didn’t matter. They would’ve killed us.”

  “How did you survive?” Quinn asked, and though her voice was steady, there was an intensity to her gaze.

  “I don’t know.” The memory was nothing more than a blinding flash of gray light, as if the hedron had scrubbed it from his mind. “I just opened it, and it almost burned my damn hand off.”

  “Show me,” Quinn demanded.

  Riot held out his bandaged hand, the chains clinking faintly. Quinn reached forward and grasped his wrist, gently peeling off the dirty bandage.

  The hedron had burned his skin until it was blackened and cracked, and now it was swollen and weeping a sickly yellow-red puss. Riot caught the rank smell of it and fought to keep his stomach from heaving.

  “You should have been killed, but you are not, and I would know why. What was it like?” Quinn asked.

  Riot had seen dogs with the rage before, red-eyed and frothing, mad enough to go up against a mountain bear. The hedron had felt like that—a rabid, senseless animal. But he didn’t trust this woman from the east any more than the wikkan.

  “After I opened it, I blacked out,” he lied.

  Her light brown eyes bored into him, alive like burning sand. “You should not lie to me,” she said, dropping his hand with a frustrated click of her tongue.

  “What did Price say to the Faelen?” Kerne asked.

  “You must have spoken to the others,” Riot replied.

  “And now I’m speaking to you.”

  “He tried to go over to the Mazral. He told them that he had information that was valuable and that he’d worked for you, Ritta Kerne of the wikkan,” he recounted, the details coming back to him, like dust blown away from words carved in stone. “He said something about Morbian. A tower, or something.”

  Both women looked sharply at each other, and he felt a sinking feeling. The mention of the Sun Tower had been the signal for the High Faelen to order them to be killed. “None of the others heard him say that, only me,” he added quickly.

  “You’ll have to leave now, Natalia, it’s too dangerous for them to remain in the city. Guide them to the foothills and come back here,” Kerne said.

  “What about him?” Quinn asked, nodding to Riot.

  “If I thought it would change anything, I would not have agreed to help you,” Kerne said.

  Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “When last I checked, it was me who was helping you.”

  The wikkan withstood the fiery gaze of the eastern woman like a lump of dough in an oven. “If he yields anything of interest, I will inform you.”

  Quinn was clenching her teeth so forcefully that the muscles of her jaw flexed. She cast one last contemptuous glance at Riot and swept out of the chamber. As the door briefly opened, angry raised voices could be heard on the other side.

  “Send me back to my regiment,” Riot said as the door closed.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. You will be court-martialed for the theft of the hedron, and when you are found guilty, you will be hanged.”

  “But I’m not guilty. It was Price who stole it, you know that. He worked for you.”

  “Correct,” Kerne smiled. “Price did work for me. He was one of the first Leybound, did you know that? The spell-craft he was given is of exceptional quality, though utterly wasted on him. He hates the ley power far too much to use it.”

  “Then tell Colonel Williams that I took the hedron from Price. I got it back.”

  Kerne shook her head. "Unfortunately, Colonel Williams has recently lost the patronage of Arcanist Riley, and it seems he blames you.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Don’t be modest, Nathanial, you showed Riley adventure. You were quite inspirational. Besides, it suits me better to have Price’s role left out of all of this. Politics, I’m afraid, but you should know that your sacrifice is for the good of the war effort.”

  Years ago, Riot might have lunged at the wikkan, but the iron ring set in the floor looked sturdy, and he was tired, and besides that, Ritta Kerne looked like she could wrestle a hog. Still, he strained against the chain, the metal biting into the flesh of his wrists. “You said you’d help me!”

  Kerne clapped her hands together, her face split in a wide smile. “It is good to see there is still some fight left in you. I was afraid the hedron had scoured it all away. I’ll bet it feels like the inside of your skin has been rubbed with sand, doesn’t it? Now, I can tell you haven’t met many wikkan, if you had, you would know to listen more carefully. I didn’t say I would help you; I said I would tell you how you can help yourself. What did you think of Price?” she asked.

  “He’s a traitor,” Riot said. For him, any comparison ended there.

  “He’s a broken soldier. You’re a lot alike in many ways, but where you move from battle to battle, he sees everything as a war.”

  “I don’t need a sermon, just tell me what I have to do to get out of here.”

  "It's quite simple, really. After you are convicted, you need to ask to be made leybound.”

  Riot couldn’t help but laugh, but the sound died in his throat when he saw Ritta Kerne’s stony expression. “You’re giving me the chance to die, just in a different way?”

  “I’m giving you a chance to live, Nathanial. A change is coming to this war, and you’ll want to be here when it does.”