In the Name of the Realm
The war rages on. No longer do knights clash on the battlefield, watering grasses with their blood. No longer do ships burn on the grey water of the Bearded Strait. The fight has moved from the battlefields to the shadowy alleys, and it's fought not by warriors but by men of stealth with secret weapons and cold eyes.
As long as Ruvor and Wolkar exist, the war will continue to burn like a wildfire, consuming the best and the brightest in its path. All we can do is sit on the edge of the inferno, taking care to brush away the sparks that singe our clothes, and hope the fire doesn't turn our way.
From the Diaries of Ladius Mer, Judge Prime of Omash Republic
Chapter 1
2430 o.e. Sovon Marshes, somewhere on the Border of Omash and Wolkar
The steel collar chaffed her neck, rubbing the skin raw. Celesse reached and dug her fingers under the inch-thick band. Nice and tight.
If she had been secured with wrist cuffs, she could have thinned the metal with magic, expanding it until she could slip her hands free. It would've offered her a glimmer of hope, but the Ruvorians had chained her by the neck, like a rabid dog. Stretching the collar wide enough to pass it over her head would take too much time and too much magic.
She sat cross-legged on the filthy floor of the cell. Sharp crumbs of mortar dug into her bruised flesh, but she was past the point of caring about small discomforts. The magic cloaked her like a translucent web, woven of minuscule invisible eno threads. Celesse pulled them one by one and bound them to the collar.
She had almost forgotten how to work the alteration spells on metal - the last time she could recall doing one was over thirty five years ago, guided by an expensive tutor during the sunshine-filled days in Samarine Keep. Three days of beatings did wonders to refresh her memory.
She thought of Ramiar and smiled, causing blood to swell on her cracked lips. He would be proud if he could see her now. She wished she could've said good-bye to him and to the children, but lately the Divine Family scoffed on her wishes.
Come to think of it, the gods hadn't treated her too badly. She had loved and had been loved in turn. She'd seen three children to adulthood. Many women had less than she did.
The last eno string slid onto the steel and merged with it. The collar vibrated weakly, held in check by a single vein of magic. Lady Celesse Mar took her final breath and let go.
The collar bit into her neck. Crushing pressure gripped her throat and squeezed tighter and tighter. The world swayed in painful haze. She rocked back and fell onto the stones.
The door flew open. Hands grabbed the collar.
"Shit! Hot!"
"Cut it! Cut it now!"
Too late, Celesse thought. Blackness swelled and engulfed her, and she slipped into its embrace with overwhelming relief.
#
Celesse awoke to sunlight and pain. She blinked once, twice, and the familiar stone walls of her cell came into focus.
"No," she whispered, sending a jolt of pain down her battered throat.
"Yes," said Spider's voice next to her.
She pulled herself upright from a wooden cot. Her hands went to her throat and found the hard shell of a neck brace. The chain and the twisted steel collar lay abandoned on the floor.
"It takes almost five minutes to choke a man to death," Spider said. He spoke perfect Omash without any trace of an accent. "That's why people in my profession prefer to break the target's neck. All one has to do is push the head back on the neck to lock the vertebrae and twist. I can show you sometime. It's really not that difficult."
"Why are you telling me this?" Her throat protested, and the words came through in a hoarse whisper.
"It took my men two minutes to remove the collar," Spider said with a narrow smile. "I had time to spare."
He leaned against the wall, long arms crossed on his chest. He had the agile, expressive face of a man that could look like a thug or an aristocrat when it suited him. In the time of her captivity, she had seen him alternatively charming and cold, crude and refined, but his eyes never changed. She looked into them now, searching in spite of herself for weakness, compassion, a hint of humanity and found none. One might as well seek emotion from a granite wall.
She clenched her teeth and wished she could kill him. The scrape on her face still ached after her last attempt. She had to try again. This time she wouldn't let him grind her face into the floor.
"I wish you'd reconsider my request," he said. "My offer is more than generous. Three days of work, a week at the most, and you and your husband can go back to your nice life. To your children. You miss them, don't you, Celesse? I'm sure they miss you. What do you say?"
She spat in his face. He dodged, a blur she barely saw, and left her staring at the wet spot on the wall. He was enhanced, of that she was certain, and not with one of those crude modifications that pushed a single attribute to a superhuman degree. No, his enhancement must've come as a culmination of countless hours of research and experimentations done by a genius eno sculptor. Spider was someone's life work. A living, breathing abomination.
Even the enhanced made mistakes. And her neck was very fragile.
"You leave me no choice," he said.
She leaped and kicked. Her foot sliced through the air. He grabbed her ankle and jerked her down with stupefying ease. His hand snaked out and smashed into her solar plexus. Pain exploded in her stomach. She crashed to the floor in a crumpled heap.
"I abhor stupidity," he said, his voice icy. "And that was plain stupid."
Instinctively she drew her legs to her stomach, curling on the floor around the hot knot of pain.
"As I was saying, you leave me no choice. The translation of the diary is vital to me, Celesse. I will have it."
She heard the door swing open.
"Fuse her," Spider said.
No. No, no, no.
Spider crouched by her. "Excellent education is often a two-edged blade, Celesse. You know what fusion will do to you. You will gauge your progress with every new side effect, like a physician watching himself die piece by piece from the red plague. Think of your flesh and your consciousness melting into nothing. Everything that you are, I'll rip away. Everything except memories - they linger. Last chance, Celesse. Very last chance."
She clenched her fists against welling panic and spat a profanity at him.
He sighed and rose. "How long will it take?"
"In her condition?" said an unfamiliar male voice. "I'll have to heal her neck at the very least before we go forward, otherwise she'll die in the first stage."
"How long?"
"Six weeks."
"Make it three," Spider said.
"If I rush it, she won't be stable for more than a couple of weeks."
"More than enough."
"But..."
"Make it three, Efrem. We're short on time."
Hands grabbed her. She fought against them but was pinned down. The familiar prick of a needle stung her shoulder and the world faded.
#
Spider stepped onto the balcony. The Mire lay before him - a flooded plain of grasses veering to the left, flanked by thick groves of slash pines and enormous cypresses, obscene with their bloated stems.
He thought of the sunlit vineyards and low green hills of his small country estate. His memory conjured a phantom scent of flowering pomegranates to taunt him.
Divine Family, how he hated this swamp.
"You meant to fuse her from the beginning," Efrem said from the doorway. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here."
"I suspected I'd have to. Mud rats rarely break."
"Then why batter her for three days? Makes my job that much harder."
"Because she isn't from the Mire, Efrem."
"No?" The eno-sculptor leaned against the door frame.
Spider sighed. "She's the former Lady Samarine, a product of eleven generations of selective breeding. Her mother was once known as the Flower of Omash Coast, the very definition of refined grace. Muarid was in love with her. Do you recall his sonnet 'If I should never love again...'?"
"It was written to her mother?"
Spider nodded. "I had a small hope that she would give in under punishment, but this wretched place tempers people, Efrem. The mother would've fainted at a mere sight of a knife pointed at her. The daughter tried to kill herself by kicking me in the throat."
A flock of birds rose from the cypress branches and took to the air with alarmed guttural cries. Spider watched them retreat like a slow grey smudge against the sky.
"Fusion isn't a perfect art." A cautious note vibrated in Efrem's voice. "And she is nearing fifty. There is a chance she might not make it."
"I hope she makes it for your sake. She's my key, Efrem. If you break her, I'll be quite put out."
He heard the man behind him swallow.
A gust of wind brought the stench of algae. The sooner they wrapped this venture up, the better. The word of the Ruvorians flooding the Mire must've reached Virai by now. Soon the Wolkar agents would come sniffing. He wondered whom the Mirror would send.
Perhaps, it would even be Greyman. Spider smiled. Greyman, an urban agent if there ever was one, would hate the swamps as much as he did. Send the Greyman, he thought. The music has grown stale and the musicians are weary. It's about time we finished our dance.
"Still." Efrem hesitated. "What if she doesn't make it?"
"There is always her daughter," Spider said.