Chapter 3 - Heart of a Hypocrite

  An omnipresent darkness slithered between the narrow passes of the Ephemeral Stronghold. A once ramshackle hold with poorly nailed beams and dwindling investments. It was never meant to be a powerful fortress, merely an ephemeral one. Though, that name meant something else entirely since Emperor Balihann's ascension to the High Seat.

  Kazir made his way through the newly set stone halls of the fort. An earthen smell still remained in the air, unnoticed by most, but not he. The smell of a grave freshly dug, a heavy marble cask just barely set inside. Or so he thought. He'd never been to anyone's funeral. He never had reason to.

  Dark and unwelcoming were these halls. Dark too were the floors, and the stairs and every stacked stone block. No light flowed from the torches hanging from the walls, though their acrid fumes mingled at the ceiling. Kazir felt the heat of a torch when he passed by, but saw not the light of one. Saw not any light, for that matter.

  He knew though that the sun had long set if torches had been set alight. And off he was to greet a darker guest from a past he wished he could’ve kept buried. Breyla and Neelah, a pair of acolytes from the Wickar Temple, had come to rest before they journeyed southwest to either Arcaeus Peak or Metsiphon to take Kalin's head and that of his entire line. The fourth group of Wickar assassins to come in the last half year for the task. Each one had failed, just as Kazir had warned that they would. After all, their hubris was truly great if they thought they might succeed in a task Kazir himself had failed to accomplish.

  Of course, assuming he let them take a crack at the bloody affair to begin with.

  The last three attempts at assassination had ended here, in the Ephemeral Hold, Kazir's hands stained with the blood of colleagues he had not an ounce's worth of compassion for. And it would be much the same for Breyla and Neelah.

  Kazir let out grumbles on his ascent to the third and current highest floor of the expanding fort. The stairs were steep, and each step laboriously high to a man of his years. Age was a cruel thing, a chain ever kept around one's joints, slowly tightening as time withered and bled onto the pages of history.

  Kazir long heard the coming of a pair of Empire soldiers before they entered the same hall as he. They bore spears he knew. He could hear the vague rustle of a spear haft rolling upon a shoulder coated in mail. Such a sound was easy to distinguish in an empty hall where the only other sound was that of footsteps and an occasional crackle from a brazier. Kazir felt a slight shift in wind as the two halfwits saluted their blind commander. Though, who was the halfwit here if he knew they saluted. Shouldn't he be happy for such a show of discipline?

  He turned a corner and scratched at his unshaved chin, feeling the length of his long hair wrapped around his neck with the ends of his fingers. He seldom had the luxury of having decently trained and loyal soldiers at his command when playing the part of a general. He'd desired such discipline then, but no longer now that he was blind. It filled him with annoyance to know that others did not take mindful courses of action due to his disability.

  A stretched breath escaped him as he came upon the final flight of stairs. Someone was coming down in a hurry.

  “—ah, Master Kazir,” sputtered an out of breath Iskra. There was an edge of dismay in that tone. Iskra had become Kazir's eyes, checking over all manner of paperwork that reedy scribes from Carthadria managed to conjure in relation to managing a fortress. A task someone as slow minded as him was not suited to.

  A shame this one's wit is not as sharp as his blade. How those two did not come hand in hand, Kazir could not guess.

  “Is there anything I can help with?” Iskra said.

  The deeper shame was that Samlan had not returned from his task to kill Elizia Serene. Kazir was now down to the lesser of his two loyal hounds. “No. Not right now.” Kazir thought to ask for Iskra's presence during his meeting with Breyla and Neelah, but no. The presence of another Wickar might set off alarms, and that was the last thing he needed. He needed the new Wickar arrivals off guard for a clean kill.

  The ache of age tugged at his joints again at that thought.

  No. This wasn't age. This was… hesitation? “Am I afraid?” he mumbled as he reached the end of the stairs. But it wasn't fear either he soon realized. His mind played for him a scene from many years past. A scene that dulled the constant pain hammered into his eyes by Kalin, and made Kazir wish he were born blind. It was the image of two urchin girls in rags. Their hair had been shaggy and black, their skin a rustic brown like un-sanded wood, and their eyes were large and round.

  He remembered the glint of tears in those eyes. Children stolen from their homes to become Wickar initiates, to suffer the same cruelty every full-fledged assassin was put through. He remembered pitying those girls, seeing them with an iron collar around their neck at the gates of the temple on the very day of his departure.

  Breyla and Neelah.

  Kazir had wondered then if their eyes would remain the round black pearls he'd seen should they ever manage to survive the harsh trials and become a full acolyte.

  Well, they had survived, and now the pain returned to Kazir's eyes as he felt a need to gaze upon such innocence again.

  He froze in his steps. What is happening to me? Why do I feel emotions that the temple should've culled from within my breast? Each passing moment brought thoughts full of nuisance these days. He spat at his own feet, doubtful that even a shred of innocence would remain within a full-fledged blade for hire. What did it matter anyhow? Those two would die tonight. They would die by his hands.

  He continued to count his steps until he came upon the meeting chamber wherein he knew the two women awaited him. The scent of their perfume flowed from the open doorway and stung his sensitive nostrils. It was an intoxicating scent. He suspected their purpose, creases forming along his forehead, and held his breath.

  “Master Kazir,” said a sweet and feminine voice.

  “Care for a cup?” said the other, flicking her finger upon a glass pitcher topped with what smelled like wine.

  Kazir twitched. The pair were sensitive to his disability. That sparked more emotion than he thought possible. They were smart, these women, and he'd have liked them under his wing. He instead rested his hands upon the pommels of the two blades at his hip. “And how is it you've a wine pitcher at all?” he said with a sharp tone.

  Giggles.

  “I told you he'd know it was wine, Breyla.”

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  “Yes. Seems this old Scorpion hasn't lost all his sting,” was Breyla's response. She traced the lines of Kazir's tattoo with a finger. When she'd gotten this close, he couldn't tell.

  Kazir swatted Breyla's hand away and opened distance between them, heading deeper into the wide chamber than back out in the narrow hall where his blades could not breathe if needed. He felt the hair around his neck come undone and a pair of smooth, warm arms rubbed against the sides of his neck.

  “Doesn't have all his sharpness though,” Neelah whispered into his ear. She pressed her bosom to his back and let out another giggle.

  Kazir grit his teeth. They were toying with him. It's the perfume. It's slowing me… He let his scimitar sing, ripping it free of its sheath and twisting in a motion that should have torn Neelah's gut open.

  “Whoop!” the woman said, hopping back lightly. “No need to get angry now.”

  “We just issued some orders is all,” said Breyla. “You've done a fine job in this fort. The Scorpion tattoo commands much power here. They even brought us a bowl of fruits!”

  Kazir's fingers ached from how tight he held his blade. By way of words, both of them were dressed in a rather revealing fashion if they easily swayed the men in this fort, for they were all commanded to obey only him, Iskra, and none other. Other officers of rank did not exist here. They were not needed in a fort with such… macabre purpose. “If you've finished indulging, be gone with you!” I'll kill them when they're at the door with no room to maneuver.

  There came the sound of a dagger unsheathed. Followed by the bite of teeth into an apple. “He really is a bore, isn't he, sister?” Neelah said through a full mouth.

  “To the point then. The Emperor wants to know why the previous three attempts at assassinating the High Lord Serene and his family has resulted in nothing.”

  “Their hubris was their end,” Kazir snapped. “What, you lot thought to accomplish what I hadn't been capable of for years, and you thought you'd just have it done on the first try? I've gone many a time into the grey walls of Arcaeus Peak and narrowly escaped with my life in all my attempts. It's no wonder no words have come from the previous sent Wickar.”

  “Those that were sent were deemed masters at their craft just as you,” said Breyla, her tone sharpening. Her sister chewed on loudly.

  So Breyla is the talkative one. “And that absolves them from failure? The Temple raises imbeciles these days it seems. I just said I failed many a time and that was your response?” Kazir heard a hiss behind clenched teeth. He let a smirk grow on the edge of his lip.

  “Do not be so conceited, Kazir Windsinger. We could've had you killed many a time within the past minute had we wanted.”

  “Hah! There were others that had the opportunity to kill me but didn't in the past. They came to regret it,” Kazir said, returning the threat. “If the Emperor suspects me of stabbing my fellow Wickar in the back, he can right come down here and execute me himself. I do wonder who he'll put in charge here as my replacement, though. That moody Idris Khan, or some lacking halfwit to match the honed blades of House Serene?”

  “And what if I said the Emperor commanded us to simply relieve you of your position, leaving the means as to how as… ambiguous?”

  Kazir frowned. The conversation wasn't heading where he pleased. He loosened the hooked sword from its sheath, though doubting its uses against daggers. “You? You wet eared lambs would take charge of the western front's affairs? Do please tell a better joke, Breyla.”

  “Then tell me, Kazir, why it is you've been sending squads of Field Burners out one by one than sending them out in coordination. Once you've drawn out enough riders from Arcaeus, you could easily summon soldiers from Fort Cayra to cut off their retreat back home. Xenaria suffers from political turmoil and you've not taken the opportunity to whittle down their border's defenses.”

  Field Burners… So that's what they're calling those children. Any thread of compassion he might have held for Neelah and Breyla left him then. Kazir knew now that the Temple had done an ample job in thoroughly killing the humanity from them. “Don't lecture me on military strategy, girl!” he spat.

  “And yet I've asked the questions all the same,” Breyla said. “Even if there hadn't been a price put on your head, your string of failures is enough to retire you. Permanently.”

  Kazir bent low and crossed both arms before himself in a defensive stance. “You say the Emperor's signed my death warrant?”

  “Oh it wasn't the Emperor,” Neelah giggled. “As much as he's upset with your failures, and as much as some of our Wickar colleagues despise you, this commission didn't come from any such person.”

  “Then who? Some nobility descendant whose predecessor I assassinated?” Kazir asked.

  “Close,” Neelah said. “This commission comes from the Eagle heiress herself. Seems she's not as honorable as her father, hmm?”

  Elizia Serene?

  Before she'd finished speaking, Kazir heard the soft patter of Breyla's feet rushing toward him. He felt the subtle change in wind and brought his scimitar's flat end before his heart to parry her first dagger thrust.

  “So it was true,” she sneered. “You've not entirely lost your fighting prowess.”

  “Your sister's dead,” Kazir said, just as he heard Neelah collapse to the ground while croaking. She'd been cut at the throat it seemed. Iskra had come, quiet as a mouse, but not quiet enough to deceive his master's ears. Perhaps he's not as dull as I perceive him to be.

  “No!” Breyla cried.

  “Fool girl!” Kazir roared. Breyla had turned her head toward her sister and he'd felt it. He twisted his scimitar to strike in a way that made dodging to the left easy for her. She did just that and Kazir, with a well timed swing, caught her wrist with his hooked sword. With a mighty tug, he nearly ripped Breyla's wrist straight from its arm. She shrieked as she fell with a heavy thud.

  Kazir saw the image perfected in his mind —that of a small girl with large round eyes crying as would a babe in her mother's arms. Hesitation slowed him for but a second. Then, his scimitar found the girl's heart, the sound of its drum abruptly halted.

  “A shame. They were rather beautiful,” Iskra mumbled, putting Neelah out of her misery.

  Kazir covered his useless eyes with his hands, shading them from the shame that was his own. Breyla wasn't a true Wickar. If she were, she wouldn't have fallen for such a simple feint. She wouldn't have turned her head from her enemy. She felt for her sister. Seemed she did have a droplet of humanity left. Perhaps that drop could have become a rapid. The very same rapid Kazir found himself being swept away in.

  The lines I've crossed to bite at Kalin, and now I defend him by defending my own pride… “But his daughter commissioned the Wickar to kill me,” he mumbled.

  “Master?” Iskra said.

  “This cycle of violence never ends, does it, Iskra?” Kazir had long since assumed the Wickar an arm for the Empire because of their association with the nation, but the Wickar were naught but hired blades with great skill in their heinous craft. Anyone could commission them with the right price. “I'm glad you came back. I don't think I could've won against two on my own. Sometimes I give you less credit than what you're worth.”

  “I am unworthy of your praise, Master. In truth I returned to report a new round of arrivals.”

  Or maybe I give him too much credit, Kazir thought, shaking his head. “Who?”

  “More dead eyed child soldiers sent from Carthadria.”

  More Field Burners, as was their apparent name. Where Emperor Balihann found such a stock of children to throw away, Kazir could not guess. The stranger part were their reported ghastly stares and obscene loyalty to follow any command without objection. It was as if they were drugged, but of all his knowledge on narcotics and poisons, Kazir knew no substance that could enforce such loyalty from a child. They made for the perfect soldiers, and that was exactly what Balihann had ordered them used as. They were disposable bodies to hammer nails into House Serene's sense of justice and morality, so that the noble Eagle might become a savage monster easily beaten.

  “Field Burners…” Kazir mumbled. The Ephemeral Fortress' ephemeral soldiers. He hated this new Emperor. There had to be a line that no man would cross. Where was Balihann's line if he manipulated children and sent them to war?

  “Master?”

  “Send them over the river as usual,” Kazir said, almost breaking out into mad laughter. Where is my line if I sent Samlan after Kalin's daughter? Where is my line if I'm the one blindly following orders than trying to help these children? “Give them some ponies too. If they gain any sense, maybe they'll just run away.”

  Kazir wiped clean his weapons and sheathed them. He wondered how different the world might have been if he'd extended a helping hand to Breyla and Neelah when he'd first seen them rather spare but a pitying glance and turn away. “And have someone come and clean up this mess.”

  “As you wish,” Iskra said. His footsteps then faded down the corridor.

  Kazir slowly wrapped his long hair back around the scars of his neck. As much as he wanted to deny it, Breyla's words had been correct. He'd been slacking off in his assaults on Serene lands. He'd all but given it up when told to use these mindless child soldiers. The ache in his eyes refused to leave, but they no longer fueled Kazir's hatred for Kalin. Rather, they served as a reminder of all the decisions he could've taken to avoid arriving at where he was now.