Blood of the Chosen

Book 2: Burningblade & Silvereye

by Django Wexler

Genres: Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Standing on opposite sides of a looming civil war, two siblings discover that not even ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.
Four hundred years ago, a cataclysmic war cracked the world open and exterminated the Elder races. Amid the ashes, their human inheritor, the Dawn Republic, stands guard over lands littered with eldritch relics and cursed by plaguespawn outbreaks. But a new conflict is looming and brother and sister Maya and Gyre have found themselves on opposite sides.
At the age of five, Maya was taken by the Twilight Order and trained to be a centarch, wielding forbidden arcana to enforce the Dawn Republic's rule. On that day, her brother, Gyre, swore to destroy the Order that stole his sister... whatever the cost.
Twelve years later, brother and sister are two very different people: she is Burningblade, the Twilight Order's brightest prodigy; he is Silvereye, thief, bandit, revolutionary.
2021 Head of Zeus

Release date: October 5, 2021

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 528

Sample

Gyre sat on a boulder and shaded his eyes, looking down the length of the little valley.

It was a beautiful day in a beautiful spot. Summer was shading into fall, putting a hint of chill in the air, but the afternoon sun was still warm. A shrunken stream wound snakelike between tufts of grass and stands of hardy mountain bushes. And of course there were the serried ranks of the Shattered Peaks, snowcapped mountains stretching off into blue infinity.

The problem is, it’s a beautiful spot that looks just like every other beautiful spot in the plaguing mountains.

“You think this is the right valley?” Kit said from behind him. “They all look the same to me.”

“Me too.” Gyre sighed. “We’re in the right area, but…”

“Well, we can always check the next one. And the one after that.” Kit’s voice was chipper. “I’m in no hurry. You’re the one who’s dying.”

Gyre frowned. “Who says I’m dying?”

“Just, you know, in general. Since you still have a fragile, aging human body.”

“Weren’t you the one who offered to give up half of eternity last night for a taste of my baked potato?”

“I’m trying,” Kit said in a tone of wounded dignity, “to practice positive thinking.”

Gyre lowered his hand and turned. Kit’s voice was coming from a construct, a spiderlike thing half a meter high with an oval central body and eight limbs that could function as either legs or manipulators. It was made of striated black muscle laid over a metal skeleton, the fibers stretching and pulsing as it moved. In the past week, Kit had become quite adept at controlling the thing, and Gyre even thought he could see some of her body language in the way it carried itself.

Kit wasn’t in the construct, of course. It was more like an appendage, along with hundreds of others, connected to the Core Analytica in the now-crippled Leviathan. Gyre had transferred Kit’s mind into the great construct while she lay dying, and now its swarm served as her surrogate bodies. There were three basic types: a roughly human-sized version for heavy work and an even larger variety for hauling cargo, in addition to this small scout.

“And the most positive thing I can think of is that I’ll get to watch everybody get old and die, while I don’t have to,” Kit went on. “It’s very comforting.”

“I think I read a fairy tale where that was considered a curse,” Gyre said.

“I don’t see why. I’m going to have such a good time outliving the shit out of all of you.”

“Fair enough. I suppose one takes one’s fun where one can find it.”

“Exactly.”

Gyre got to his feet, brushing dust off the tail of his coat. He patted his side, and the little construct swarmed up his leg and onto his back, tiny claws gripping. It settled on his shoulder, where he’d grown used its modest weight.

The boulder stood at the head of the valley, where the slopes grew too rocky to climb. Gyre was headed for a tall, flat section of cliff, which he desperately hoped looked familiar. A week or so previously, he’d emerged from the ghoul-built tunnels running under the mountains somewhere in this area, but finding the exact spot had proved to be more difficult than he’d hoped.

There. After a week, soft earth held no footprints, but a patch of bare rock showed a long, unnatural scrape. Naumoriel had come with them, in a cart-sized war-construct, and its traces were harder to obscure. This has to be it.

He hiked closer, legs straining at the slope, and ran his fingers along the wall of rock.

“Well?” Kit said from his shoulder.

“You said you could open it,” Gyre said.

“I said I think I can open it,” Kit said. “Assuming this is actually a door at all.”

“Try.”

“Just so we’re clear, if I do get it open, someone is going to notice.”

“I know.” He and Kit had learned the hard way that you couldn’t sneak into Refuge.

“Okay. Here goes.”

Nothing obvious happened. From what Kit had explained, ghoul constructs used invisible energy to talk to one another across short distances, and she could use this channel to convince some of them to do what she wanted. Gyre waited, holding his breath. The little construct on his shoulder shifted its weight.

“Is it—” he began.

“Quiet. This is tricky.” The construct gave a credible impression of the sound of Kit clicking her tongue. “There we go.”

A hole appeared in the side of the mountain, part of the rock face sliding aside to reveal a long, curved tunnel. Gyre let out his breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Finally.

“Good work.”

“Better get inside,” Kit said. “I don’t know how long it’ll stay open.”

Gyre strode forward. Patches of faintly glowing moss provided only a sliver of light—ghouls and their constructs could see in almost total darkness. Fortunately, Gyre could as well, through his silver eye. Provided I have a ghoul to charge me back up again. The energy bottle at his hip had barely a third of its power remaining.

The tunnel was perfectly smooth, bored by tireless, painstaking constructs, stretching back and away into the stone until it vanished around a curve. There was only one way to go, so Gyre started walking. Behind him, the door slid closed.

“So we made it,” Kit said in the silence that followed. “Now what?”

“Now we see if the ghouls are willing to talk to us.”

“And if they’re not?”

Gyre sighed. “Then we probably get cut to pieces by constructs.”

“Well. You do. I’ll have to find someone else to hang out with.”

“You’re getting good at this positive thinking, you know that?”

They heard the guard-constructs coming before they saw them, a heartbeat-fast slap of leathery feet on stone. A pair of the things came around the curve of the tunnel, sprinting as fast as a warbird at full gallop. Like Kit’s little spider, they were built of dark, pulsing muscle wrapped around a metal frame. These were soldier-constructs, roughly humanoid, bodies reinforced with steel plates. Bracers on their arms carried long, curved blades.

Gyre held up his hands, hoping they were smart enough to understand the gesture. He took a deep breath and shouted, “Please! I need to speak to Elariel!”

The things didn’t even slow down. Gyre swore and went for his sword.

At the same time, he concentrated and heard a click from the base of his skull. The world suddenly went slow, as though everything was underwater. Shadows fanned out ahead of the two constructs, fading from almost solid to wraithlike—projections of where the things would be a few moments from now, possibilities for how they could change course. Kit’s spider leapt from his shoulder, falling slowly with its legs spread wide.

At Gyre’s side, the energy bottle grew warm. I don’t have much time.

When Gyre himself moved, he felt normal, but he knew the dhaka energy running through his limbs drove him at tremendous speed. He sidestepped the first construct, bringing his sword up at an angle that let the thing’s momentum do most of the work. The ghoul blade sliced neatly through muscle and steel, taking the guard’s arm off below the shoulder. Gyre spun behind it, twisting into a downward chop that removed its other arm, then swung horizontally into the second construct, bisecting it at the waist. Black blood sprayed against the wall.

With another moment of concentration, Gyre disengaged his augmentations, and the world of shadows faded. Time abruptly resumed its normal course. Kit’s spider skittered aside, and the disarmed construct turned awkwardly, dark fluid dripping from its stumps. Its companion fell apart into two halves.

“Listen to me,” Gyre said. Someone has to be able to hear. Naumoriel had been able to find them as soon as they’d gotten close to Refuge, hadn’t he? “I need to speak to Elariel. I don’t want to threaten Refuge, I swear. I was with Naumoriel when he left.” The construct lurched forward, and Gyre jumped away. “Plague it, you gave me this sword! Can anyone hear me?”

More footsteps echoed down the tunnel. Sounds like at least half a dozen. I can’t fight them all. He felt the wall against his back and raised his blade again.

The disarmed thing in front of him abruptly stopped. Gyre once again held his breath, listening to the approaching footfalls grow louder.

“Gyre Silvereye.” A woman’s voice, with a heavy accent, issued incongruously from the construct. It wasn’t Elariel—this ghoul sounded older, and definitely less practiced with the human tongue. “You will come to Refuge for questioning at once. Surrender your weapons to the approaching guardians.”

“Understood,” Gyre said as five more soldier-constructs sprinted into view. He looked down at Kit’s spider. “See? I told you they’d let us in.”

“Oh yeah,” she said as the armored things surrounded them. “This just gets better and better.”

It took the better part of a day to walk to the ghoul city, although truth be told, by the time they got there Gyre had lost track of the hour completely. The constructs set an exhausting pace, but he was glad for their escort—the tunnels branched and twisted, and there was no chance he and Kit would have found their way alone. But the soldier-constructs never hesitated, and eventually they reached a massive pair of doors, which grudgingly pulled apart to admit them.

“So what are we telling them about me?” Kit said in Gyre’s ear as they followed the constructs in. “’Cause let me say up front if they want to come out and mess with my new brain, they can forget about it.”

“I’ll have to play it by ear,” Gyre said quietly. “What Naumoriel was doing was criminal, according to the ghouls, so they may not be happy about you.” He frowned. “You remember the rendezvous, if something goes wrong?”

Kit snorted. “I’m not sure I can forget things anymore. And anyway I’ve got a body there already.”

Gyre nodded. He was still getting used to the idea that Kit could be carrying on a conversation with him while simultaneously performing another task dozens of kilometers away. At least if the ghouls do take exception to her and take this body to bits, she’ll be fine. The same, of course, did not hold true for him.

Beyond the doors was a larger cavern. Much larger, bigger even than the dock at Leviathan’s Womb. Refuge, the last ghoul city, looked at first like a night sky full of dim, twinkling stars. Through Gyre’s silver eye, he could make out more of the shape of it—a vast cave, kilometers wide and hundreds of meters high, studded with enormous columns and rock formations. The stalactites and stalagmites couldn’t be natural, but they had been sculpted to have a rough, organic look, pillars of rock the size of tenement blocks hanging from the ceiling or thrusting up from the cavern floor. Those formations, Gyre knew from previous visits, were honeycombed with rooms and tunnels. Nearby, a small river cascaded out of an opening high in the cavern wall, splashing in a torrential waterfall into a broad pool.

It was a staggering sight, a testament to the power and skill of the ghoul engineers and dhakim. Gyre was almost certainly the only human to have seen it since the Elder War, four hundred years previously. As far as the world knew, the ghouls and the Chosen had wiped one another out—that Refuge had survived was a secret the remaining ghouls would do anything to protect.

There wasn’t much time to admire the view. His escort pointed the way, and they passed quickly through a series of arched doorways and spotless, faintly glowing tunnels. Though Refuge was a ghoul city, actual ghouls were few and far between, and it was constructs they passed in the halls. They came in all shapes and sizes, from tiny messengers smaller than Kit’s spider to great lumbering crabs carrying heavy burdens. Eventually Gyre’s escort halted and a closed door slid open. Gyre went inside, Kit still clinging to his shoulder.

“Gyre Silvereye.” It was the voice that had spoken to him through the soldier-construct. “Please sit.”

The room held only a couple of chairs, with the polished, extruded look of most ghoul furniture. One of them was occupied, so Gyre went to the other, giving a polite bow before he sat down.

The ghoul in the other chair acknowledged him with a bare nod. Like all her kind, she was humanoid but decidedly inhuman in appearance: taller than Gyre, slim enough to look rangy by human standards, and covered all over in dense brown-and-white fur. Her eyes were enormous, filling half her face with huge pupils and narrow whites, and she had long, expressive ears that twitched as she spoke. She wore no clothing, apart from a small metal coil threaded through the base of one ear. Gyre couldn’t say if it was decorative or arcana. When she smiled at him, her teeth were white and finely pointed.

“My name,” she said, with the careful diction of someone speaking a language they’d studied but not used much, “is Tyraves. I am the new Minister of the Exterior.”

“Gyre,” said Gyre. “But you knew that. Thank you for letting me back into the city.”

“It was judged that you may have important information,” Tyraves said. “If you are forthcoming with it, this will be easier for you.”

“I’m happy to tell you anything I can,” Gyre said. “But I would like to speak to Elariel.”

“Elariel”—Tyraves pronounced the name with distaste—“is currently standing trial for her part in the crimes of my… predecessor, Naumoriel.” Her sharp-toothed smile broadened. Gyre didn’t sense much humor in it, and her ears were flattened back against her skull. “Tell me of your association with them. Start from the beginning.”

“That may take some time.”

Tyraves’ tongue darted across her pointed teeth. “Neither of us is going anywhere.”

Fair enough. He’d expected something like this, although now that he was faced with the reality of Tyraves’ unsympathetic features, the plan he’d come up with on the road back from Leviathan’s Womb was starting to feel distinctly shaky. A little late to back out now, though.

He laid out the story for her with only a few careful edits, from when Kit had recruited him to the final trip to Leviathan’s Womb. How he’d fought off the Order’s attempt to stop them, defeating his sister, Maya, and another centarch—

“Two centarchs.” Tyraves’ ears twitched. “You fought off two centarchs on your own?”

“Only thanks to Naumoriel’s augmentations, of course.”

“Hmm.” Tyraves leaned forward in her chair and reached out with one hand, laying her thin fingers on Gyre’s arm. His flesh rose in goose bumps as something raced through him, the soft breath of dhaka. The ghoul’s eyes widened a little. “I see.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” She sat back, ears flattening again. “What Naumoriel did to you was… extensive. I doubt anything like it has been attempted since the war. I am surprised, frankly, that you survived.”

Gyre shivered. “It certainly wasn’t… pleasant.”

“I imagine not.” She steepled her hands. “So you repelled the Order attack while Naumoriel was aboard the Leviathan, installing the Analytica. Then what?”

“Then…” Gyre hesitated. This is the tricky part. “I’m not sure, exactly. Something went wrong. There was an explosion, and the Leviathan fell against the dock. By the time I got aboard, Naumoriel was dying.”

In reality, the explosion had been Gyre’s own doing, as had Naumoriel’s death. Seeing exactly what the old ghoul had planned to unleash against the Republic, and with his sister’s desperate plea ringing in his ears, Gyre had disabled the Leviathan. Ever since, he’d spent his nights wondering whether he’d made the right choice.

But Tyraves doesn’t need to know that.

“Old fool,” she said, and muttered something scathing in her own language. “We are saved the trouble of a trial for him, at any rate.” She leaned forward again, her ears standing straight. “But as far as you are aware, the Order agents never came in contact with Naumoriel?”

“Definitely not,” Gyre said. “We fought on the dock, and he was already on board.”

She pursed her lips. “Still better if you had killed them. Or better yet if the place had collapsed and killed you all. But perhaps disaster has been avoided.”

“I don’t think there’s any risk to Refuge,” Gyre said. “For all the Order knows, we were just scavengers who dug up a big find.”

“That is not your determination to make,” Tyraves snapped. “The Geraia has entrusted me with the responsibility of keeping our city safe. What steps that entails is my decision.” She sat back, hands folded. “But there remains the question of what to do with you, now that you’ve conveniently brought yourself back here.”

“I want to talk to Elariel. Please.”

“She is in no position to help you.”

“Even so.” She’s the only ally in this place I’m likely to have.

“Hmm.” Tyraves tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, thoughtfully, as if weighing her curiosity against the inconvenience of his request. “Perhaps. Wait here.”

The wait turned out to be at least an hour, while Gyre’s certainty that he’d made a disastrously wrong choice steadily increased.

I didn’t have to come back here. No doubt the ghouls would have tried to track him down, but the augmentations combined with the skills from his career as a thief and revolutionary would have made it easy to hide. Get away from Deepfire, away from the mountains. There were more than enough cesspools in the Splinter Kingdoms for a mercenary to disappear into.

But that would have meant giving up. Gyre had come to the mountains in search of the lost city of the ghouls, hoping that it would give him the power to destroy the Order that had stolen his sister and taken his eye. What he’d found went far beyond his wildest hopes, and to turn away from it now…

Enough. He clenched his fists. I’ve already thrown the dice. Now it’s just a matter of seeing the roll.

Kit waited on the chair while he paced back and forth. She didn’t speak—he had no doubt the ghouls could listen, if they cared to—but the little spider-construct was surprisingly reassuring. I’m not alone. Not completely. Tyraves hadn’t raised an eyebrow, either. Constructs were such a part of the fabric of ghoul life that they were practically invisible, and Kit’s body wasn’t big enough to be dangerous.

Eventually, the door slid open. The soldier-constructs had been joined by a transporter—a chair on construct legs, essentially. Gyre climbed aboard, and the thing took off at a gallop, speeding with uncanny grace through twisting corridors and up endlessly spiraling ramps. Gyre got brief glimpses of the city through passing windows and had the impression that they were ascending, winding their way up toward the top of the massive cavern. The tunnels grew more elaborately adorned, featureless smoothness giving way to intricate carvings and soft, mossy carpets. There were even other ghouls about, walking in small groups surrounded by guardian constructs or carried in chairs like his own.

When the transporter came to a halt, Gyre found himself in front of a new set of doors, carved with a stylized frieze depicting the city. More soldier-constructs guarded them, massive things twice the size of the rest. Tyraves was waiting for him, and at her nod he gingerly slipped down from the chair.

“The Geraia is in session,” the ghoul said. “Elariel is with them, in case her testimony is required. You may speak to her, but do not interrupt the proceedings.”

The Geraia, Gyre had gathered, was something like the ghoul’s version of the Senate, and so he was expecting the chamber of the Senate in Skyreach—a semicircle of chairs, with a central rostrum for a speaker. Instead he found himself walking into something more like an arena, a circular floor ringed by more construct guards. Around it were box seats, each separated from its neighbors by columns, stacked one above the other at least ten levels above the floor.

Gyre guessed that membership in the Geraia must be based on age, because the ghouls in the boxes looked ancient, fur gone gray and patchy. Many were housed in customized constructs, like the one Naumoriel had used, connected to them by tubes and wires. Someone was talking in the liquid gabble of the ghoul language when Gyre entered, but the speech came to a halt as a murmur ran through the room. Gyre felt wide, rheumy eyes on him as he crossed to a small table, where Elariel was sitting hunched over, looking miserable.

A bell rang, low and deep, and someone else was talking up above. Gyre heard Tyraves reply, waiting near the door, but it was all incomprehensible. Elariel looked around, her ears going rigid with shock at the sight of him.

“Gyre?” The word was a hiss. “What are you doing here? I thought…” She lapsed into her own tongue for a moment.

“I figured I’d drop in and see how you were doing,” Gyre said, taking the seat beside her. Overhead, an argument seemed to be in progress.

“You can’t be here,” Elariel said. “This is the Geraia. There hasn’t been a human here since… since ever!”

“It’s a historic occasion, then.” Gyre grinned, fighting down nerves. Elariel’s ears twitched, and she smiled briefly, then shook her head.

“There is no way you’re getting out of here alive,” she said.

“From what Tyraves was saying, neither are you.”

Elariel straightened up. “I was always prepared for that. Even if my master had succeeded.” She looked sidelong at Gyre. “They told me that he died. I don’t suppose…”

“He’s dead,” Gyre said. “I’m sorry.”

“He didn’t expect to return. He would regret only that he couldn’t bring the Leviathan to life.” Her ears drooped, but she kept her shoulders square. “And Kitsrea?”

“Dead,” Gyre said. Best keep it simple for now. “I was the only one who escaped.”

“And you came back here. Why? You must know they’ll kill you this time.”

“I have a plan. Sort of. But I’m going to need your help.”

“I’m not sure there’s much I can do.” Elariel gestured at the guards all around. “Before you got here they were debating if I merited a quick execution or a painful punishment as an example to others.”

“There must be some of them who agree with what Naumoriel was trying to do.” Gyre craned his head in a circle, catching many of the old ghouls looking down at him. “Naumoriel was old enough to remember the war, and some of these look even older.”

“If you mean they want revenge on the Chosen and the Order, of course they do,” Elariel said. Her ears quivered angrily. “But they’re cowards, afraid of the slightest risk. They’ve hidden under this mountain for so long they can’t imagine doing anything else. My master hoped to push them, make it impossible for them to remain concealed, but…”

“What if I offered them a way to strike back, without any risk to Refuge? Do you think they would take it?”

“I think they won’t listen to a human, any more than you would listen to a… a talking loadbird.”

“A talking loadbird would get a lot of attention because it’s a talking loadbird,” Gyre said. “If I try to explain my plan, will you translate for me?”

“You mean here? Now?”

“When else?”

“I don’t have any authority to speak here,” Elariel said, her ears drooping again. “It’s against the rules of the chamber, unless I’m called on to answer a question, and even then—”

“What are they going to do?” Gyre said. “Execute you?”

“I…” Elariel stared at him with her huge, dark eyes, the tips of her ears slowly rising. “I suppose you’re right.” She gave a small, sharp-toothed smile. “Just don’t blame me when they dissolve your living brain in a vat of acid.”

“Can they really do that?”

“Oh yes. Dhaka can be used for some very imaginative tortures.”

“Good to know,” Gyre said. “Okay. Let me get their attention, and then do your best to translate.”

She nodded, and Gyre got to his feet.

Time to find out if this sounds as good as it does in my head. He took a deep breath and shouted as loud as he could manage.

“Members of the Geraia!”

The murmur of conversation running through the hall cut off abruptly. As the echoes died away, an old woman’s tremulous voice said something sharp, and there was a scattering of laughter.

“She asked what the beast was braying about,” Elariel said under her breath. “‘Beast’ in this case specifically in the sense of an animal bred for labor, like a—”

“I get the gist,” Gyre muttered. “Just follow along.” He cleared his throat and said, “I apologize for the interruption. I understand that my presence here is unprecedented. But I believe that my experience has been equally unprecedented, and I have a proposal I would like to put to you.”

It was actually an advantage sometimes, Gyre thought, not to speak the language. People were shouting back at him, but they were easy to ignore. He plowed forward, Elariel repeating his words in her own tongue.

“Naumoriel planned to reactivate the Leviathan and use it to crush the Republic and the Order. You have condemned his plan as dangerous for Refuge, and you are right to do so. If I had not been able to defeat the agents of the Order, they might have caught up with him and found proof of your city’s existence.”

“You’re not helping your case,” Elariel hissed as the shouts from above grew louder.

Gyre swallowed and went on. “But even if he failed, I think that Naumoriel understood the problem. The problem is humanity. Here I stand, after all, in a place where no human has ever stood before.”

A ghoul shouted something back, to more laughter. “He says that can be fixed,” Elariel translated unnecessarily.

“You could kill me, certainly. But you cannot avoid dealing with humanity. There are too many of us and too few of you. Fortunately for both sides, we don’t need to be in conflict!” Gyre spread his hands. “I know, in the past, humans served the Chosen. But the Chosen are dead and gone. All that’s left is a shadow, a dead hand locked around humanity’s throat. A corpse-claw called the Order.

“That’s where Naumoriel went wrong. If he’d succeeded with the Leviathan, he might have crushed Skyreach, maybe even broken the Order. But he could never have destroyed humanity entirely, and he would have succeeded only in teaching the survivors to hate the ghouls even more than they already do. Eventually, they would find their way here, and they would destroy you.”

“You… threaten us?!” The words were halting but recognizable. A ghoul on the third tier was on her feet, hands on the rail as she glared down at Gyre. “Here… in our own domain… you speak of destroying… usss?” She gestured emphatically with one hand. “We… destroy… you. Tyraves!”

“I’m not here to threaten!” Gyre shouted before the Minister of the Exterior could move. “I’m here to make an offer I think will help both ghouls and humans. My people don’t want to be slaves to the Order any longer. If we could, we would throw off the legacy of the Chosen and all their prejudices with it. I’ve seen what your arcana can do, your dhaka. If humans knew how much you could help them, they would line up to be your allies.”

A big, barrel-chested ghoul in the lowest tier boomed an answer that got applause. Gyre glanced at Elariel, who translated, “He says that the humans would line up to plunder our living city like they plunder our dead ones.”

“Some might,” Gyre admitted in answer. “You need to remain hidden for now, of course. But I think you’re selling humanity short. So here is my offer, which carries no risk to Refuge. I will go back into the human world. I have connections among those who want to overthrow the Order. Give me supplies—weapons, medicine, money—and I can gain influence among them.”

He turned in a slow circle. “The Order’s control is based on fear. Everyone knows that the centarchs are unstoppable. But with your help, I fought them and won.” This was the key, the point that had burned itself into Gyre’s mind. “The Order has a vast reach, but in reality they are spread thin. Only the knowledge that no one can oppose them keeps them in power. Break that—break it even once—and the whole edifice will crumble like a rotten stump and take the Republic with it. And then we can build something in the wreckage. A new human society, in partnership with the ghouls.

“And if I fail, what of it? Give me nothing that can’t be explained as scavenged, and even in the worst case, nothing will lead back here. The Order will never suspect anything until it is too late. What, in the end, do you have to lose?”

The hall was getting quieter, he thought, as he approached the peroration, while Elariel’s voice rang louder. As he finished, there was a moment of silence. Then the deep-voiced ghoul spoke, and it was not Elariel but Tyraves who translated.

“What,” she said, walking over to their table, “would you actually do? Where would you go?”

“To Khirkhaz,” Gyre said immediately. It was another thing he’d gone through, over and over, since leaving Leviathan’s Womb. “In the far south. They’ll be looking for me in Deepfire. Khirkhaz is on the other side of the Republic, and I have contacts there. There’s a group called the Commune who have been fighting the Republic and the Order for years. If I can bri