CHAPTER TWENTY TWO - LAST JOB

Birek woke to the pale morning sun filtering through his window and savored that familiar, heavy silence in his mind. For years, hearing other people’s lies, fears, and secret ambitions echo through his own mind had worn him down past bearing.

The dark days when he’d drowned in oceans of minds as a Channeler of Consciousness were behind him. After that last mission on the border, the one with Commander Luvo, his mind had been left in pieces, too spent ever to work magic again. He was retired now. There was nothing left for him to hear but his own silence.

He rose slowly from his bed and crossed on bare feet over the wooden floor to his small but orderly kitchen.

His first task was to see to the brass censer by the window. The Dreamwort inside it had nearly run out. He opened the small wooden box on the kitchen shelf. The inside was full of golden Crownamber resin, gathered from the Capital’s fertile forests with the Essence of Being sealed within it. For anyone with money, magic in the Capital was a comfort you could buy.

He took an amber tablet the size of a lentil from the box and pressed it into the soil of the censer. When he lit the herb, the insulating resin began to melt in the spreading heat. The cell-renewal magic trapped inside seeped slowly into the soil. As the tip of the herb burned and gave off smoke, a magical growth phase rising from the root renewed the leaf at the very same pace. Burning and growth… a flawless, endless cycle. Birek smiled, watching the sweet jasmine scent that would fill the room all day.

Turning to breakfast, he reached for the earthenware bowl on the counter. The night before, he’d marinated a tough cut of game meat in strained yogurt and spices and dropped in a green Crownamber tablet, an enzyme accelerant. He lifted the lid. Through the night the magic inside the amber had sped the yogurt’s cultures and enzymes a thousandfold, finishing in a single night what would normally take days. The meat was so perfect it would fall apart at a touch.

Now for the morning tea.

He filled his cup with cold water and dropped in a pale-red-leafed Emberwort. This time he took an amber tablet veined with red from the box and let it fall into the water. The resin dissolved within seconds. As the Essence was set free, the Emberwort’s cellular respiration was triggered at once. A red light ran through the plant’s veins, and the immense biological heat thrown off by its metabolism brought the cold water in the cup to a rolling boil in seconds.

A resource that grows only in the soil of the Capital, Birek thought. Crystals like Putridglass, with their conductive nature, carried a spell as it was cast, while resins like Crownamber, with their insulating nature, sealed a worked spell inside. And once the resin began to melt, the magic already worked into it would release slowly. Very clever.

He took up the warm tea he’d prepared without lighting a single fire. He let himself down into his wooden rocking chair, drew a deep breath, and was about to take the first sip when —

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The door was struck three times, utterly rhythmic and solid.

Birek’s hand froze in midair. As the hot steam of the tea struck his face, those old, tired alarm bells in the depths of his mind began to ring. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He’d been on the roads so long that no neighbor who knew him was left in this quarter.

He set his cup down slowly on the table. He walked to the door, his steps heavy. He stopped behind the wooden door and, before laying a hand on the latch, asked in a cold voice:

“Who is it?”

The voice that came from the other side was familiar enough to freeze Birek’s blood. Smooth and calm.

“You’ve been on the roads a long time, Birek. We thought we’d look in on an old friend, celebrate your retirement.”

Birek closed his eyes. His mind no longer worked the way it used to, but he could feel the dark intent on the other side of the door. This was no courtesy call.

He turned the lock slowly. When the door cracked open, two men in long robes stood before him. That familiar smile was on their faces.

“Come in,” said Birek, not bothering to hide the reluctance in his voice. “My tea’s just been brewed.”

The men slipped inside. Drawing the scent of the Dreamwort incense into their lungs, they ran careful eyes over the room.

“Retirement suits you, Birek,” said the man in front, an old ‘colleague’ he remembered as Stismsey. “This quiet corner of the Capital must be a good deal more comfortable than that bloody mud down south.”

“Peaceful,” Birek corrected, sitting back down at his table and taking a sip of his cooling tea. He didn’t offer the men a seat. “And I don’t want that peace disturbed.”

Stismsey gave a faint smirk, pulled out one of the chairs without asking, and sat down directly across from Birek. The other man went on standing by the door.

“Let’s get to the point, then,” said Stismsey, and the false friendliness in his voice vanished in an instant. A heavy gravity settled over the room. “With Commander Luvo’s return, the Capital has turned into an absolute witch’s cauldron. The Royal Intelligence is buzzing like a beehive. Luvo found something, but he’s keeping the secret to himself. And you, Birek… you were there beside him.”

Birek shrugged. “I was there in case I was needed. My mind’s finished now. I’m not interested in what Luvo found.”

Stismsey leaned forward and fixed his eyes on Birek’s.

“We don’t need to remind you where your loyalty lies, do we, Birek? You don’t work for the Royal’s intelligence or some army commander. You’re the Guild’s property. Retirement holds only as long as we allow it.” Stismsey’s fingers began to tap a rhythm on the wooden table. “Last night a message reached us from the Brothers’ Pass. The outlaw Leaders in that nest of filth say they’re holding two prisoners the Inquisition badly wants.”

Birek’s heart skipped, but not a muscle twitched in his face. The squad wasn’t fool enough to cut through the pass, he thought. It could be some other group.

“They’ve invited us too,” Stismsey went on, trying to catch even the smallest flicker on Birek’s face. “Said they’ll be holding an auction. They want to drag us into a bidding war with the Sanctified Bloodlines. Before the Guild sends a delegation to a dump like the Brothers’ Pass, it wants to know the worth of the goods they’re holding. Looking at the moves Luvo and the Inquisition have made these past days, these two prisoners don’t look like a coincidence.”

Birek set the teacup down on the table. The weary man inside him was resisting, for the first time in his life, in order to do the right thing.

“Luvo found only corpses in the forest,” Birek said coldly. He didn’t look away. “An elite army belonging to the Sanctified Bloodlines, wiped out by some unknown power. That’s all. Those greedy Leaders at the Brothers’ Pass are probably dressing up a few ordinary prisoners of war to sell to you at a high price. Go there and you’ll waste nothing but your time and your gold.”

Stismsey looked at Birek in silence for a few seconds. Then he slowly leaned back and smiled.

“You’re lying, Birek. Once, you’d have told that lie behind such a flawless mind-shield that I’d have believed you. But you’re weak now.”

Stismsey’s pupils suddenly clouded into a misty look. The incense smoke in the room twitched all at once, and a heavy, throat-searing pressure built in the air.

Birek felt an enormous, rusted nail being driven into his skull. The pain was so sudden and so violent that he convulsed backward out of his chair and fell. His hands flew to his temples on their own. Stismsey was using his own magic of Consciousness to attack Birek’s mind directly, in its most savage form. He wasn’t asking questions; he was ripping memories out by brute force.

“Show me!” Stismsey’s voice echoed inside Birek’s mind. It was like a storm.

As Birek writhed on the floor, blood poured from his nose in two streams. His mind, already like cracked glass from years of use, was crumbling to dust under the savage assault. The images of that slaughter in the forest rose before his eyes.

As Stismsey roamed through the mind, he began to find the pieces. Shattered spears… armor worked with stained glass and washed in blood… He went deeper still. A man using the magic of Being to heal himself. Magic worked without touching the Essence of Being.

Stismsey caught a thought fleeing through Birek’s mind. We found people still alive!

Alarm bells rang in Birek’s mind. Stismsey had seen the shattered spears and the stained-glass shards; the Guild already knew about those. His learning about the prisoners was only a matter of time. But if he learned there were people still alive, that knowledge would lead him to the tent. From the tent, to two faces.

“Yes…” Stismsey whispered in the real world, his eyes still wreathed in mist. “Whatever happened out there, it’s outside the laws of magic we know. And it seems the only lead they have is these prisoners the Inquisition is after.”

Stismsey turned his head inside the mind and moved toward the source. An infirmary tent. A tent on the border. Birek, what were you hiding?

Birek’s heart was beating as if it would shatter his ribcage. His mind was dying. When Stismsey found the tent, he would learn what there was to know about the two prisoners: a giant who couldn’t remember, and a child protecting him. In that moment — these two prisoners, sent to the Tree of Wisdom — if the squad itself had been caught at the pass, then with a little digging Stismsey would link them to the prisoners seized on the pass road within seconds. Who they were, what they were hiding, why they were valuable.

No. What they had seen in that tent would not fall into the hands of these monsters.

Birek brought down all the consciousness he had left onto his own memories like a bomb. Inside his mind he raised an enormous, impassable wall. He locked the truths about the huge man and the child into the darkest corner of that wall. To keep the wall standing, he sacrificed his own life-energy, the central core of his consciousness.

When Stismsey’s mental probe struck that wall, there was a massive backlash. Stismsey tore the mental link loose with a groan of pain and staggered back out of his chair. As his eyes returned to normal he was gasping for breath. When he brought his hand to his nose, it came away wet with freshly spilled blood.

The body of Birek, lying on the floor, shuddered violently one last time. His eyes had stayed open, but the tired light inside them had gone out completely. The blood seeping from his nose and ears was forming a small lake on the wooden floor. After a lifetime spent among lies and blood along the borderlands, Birek had, for the first time in his life, bid his farewell heroically — by keeping a secret.

The man waiting at the door came quickly to Stismsey’s side. “Are you all right? What did you see?”

Stismsey straightened, holding his head, and looked at the corpse on the floor with hatred.

“The old fool killed himself. Locked his own consciousness away,” Stismsey grumbled. As he brushed himself off, a satisfied, dark expression came over his face. “But I got what I needed. A use of magic we never thought possible before… a power that could wipe out an army without leaving a trace. And it seems these two prisoners are the only lead in the middle of it all.”

As Stismsey headed for the door, he looked back one last time at Birek’s cooling body.

“Send word to the Guild. We’re going to the Brothers’ Pass.”