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The Ringed City claimed its name as a gentle snowfall graced the evening. Lit lanterns gave shape to sloping rooftops, to pleasant shadows in quiet alleys. The populace, and there were so many, laughed and sang, bartered and bought their way to the day’s end. Wax, after two weeks in the city, no longer jerked his head around at the myriad noises, no longer crinkled his nose at the smells as sewage raced down to the sea. He wore thick Rana linens, buttressed by Whent furs, a new Foti-forged blade on his hip, thicker than a Kance rapier and less likely to get Wax into trouble. Tufted boots and a wool cap added themselves to his new wardrobe, provided by Eujo’s largesse.
Kance’s Second Queen walked nearby, the two making their way back to her vessel for what its captain, Deux, declared was a special dinner. A recent warm spell, despite it being early winter, had opened a path through the sea ice, or so the rumor said, and they had a chance, now, to make it north to Whent. A celebration tonight, and soon an embarking to that rocky isle.
Neither Eujo nor Wax seemed to find a smile in their slow wandering. Wax couldn’t guess at Eujo’s reasons for seeming reluctant, but he knew his own lay in the quest itself, in taking up a Renewal’s mantle yet again and throwing his family, himself into harm’s way. They’d barely survived the last fiend assault, not to mention the traitorous Kance guards, and the nightmares from both had plagued Wax ever since.
How many more would he earn before someone took the new seat on the Wound’s throne?
The whispers in his mind flickered at the thought. Three skars, from Vis, Foti, and Rana set their small gemstones into Wax’s necklace, one he kept tucked beneath the layers. For all the honors bestowed among the Renewals, he’d learned the isles were often a desperate place, with skars just one more valuable to be stolen or traded. Best to keep them hidden, best to keep his eyes from meeting others.
Such a far cry from Cassignol’s casino on Foti’s southern coast, when Wax had been feted, paraded about like a celebrity. Now, searching looks seemed to pace his steps, and every sound carried an invisible menace.
“It’ll be good to leave,” Eujo said, breaking the silence. “A city like this infects you if you stay too long.”
“Most things do.” Wax fought free of his dour suspicions. Those feelings could take hold when he was alone in his cabin, in the dark. Now, here, he had a standard to uphold. “Think I’ll be missing the ale though. Beats our sweet wine any day.”
“Really? I love a good mango twist.”
Wax’s heart twinged a bit at that. Sawi’s favorite drink too. Fermented mango juice, spiced with some lemon and a bit of sugar. Like all the best Vis wines, they’d store them deep under the water in airtight barrels, the only place the wine could get cool, get stable enough to keep its flavor. Then, at the right time, the rope and buoy marked
with the proper date would get pulled back to the surface, tapped or traded.
“Best find some to take with us then,” Wax said as they turned down a narrow, sloping road. The last bit of Noctia’s living districts before they hit the port proper. “Can’t imagine Whent will have anything like it.”
“Oh, they’re closer than you think.” The Queen adopted a getup much like Wax’s own, hiding her royalty beneath standard Noctia garb, dull browns, grays, and furs everywhere. “A little ice wine is a delight.”
“You know all the best drinks from the isles, then?”
“Do you know what a Queen does, Wax?”
“You’re giving me a good idea.”
For all the time they’d spent together while Deux had the Storm’s Edge repaired, Wax and Eujo had avoided getting much into their pasts, their real lives. As if, after the Rana adventures and their near deaths, both needed to adopt a fresh persona. Instead, they’d bandied about the Ringed City trying restaurants, exploring various shops, and seeing how far into the Najahn fortresses they could get before being noticed.
That last had been Torny’s idea, a contest from the bandit to, Wax suspected, keep her from simply drinking all the hours away. The four of them—Quik, Wax’s brother and a distant presence these days—had set targets, like this Tenet’s tower or that school’s library, and the first to manage a successful infiltration won, well, more ale.
So it hadn’t done much to reduce the drinking, but when you were stuck in port during winter’s frosted chill, entertainment was hard to find. Tonight, Wax figured, would be little different.
But at least it would mark an end.
Deux put forth a generous table, overlaid with Kance dishes Wax still hadn’t grown used to. The isle, with its avian population and reliance on massive berry groves, crawling ivies, and stiff tubers, had a taste far less sweet than the sugar-filled fruit Wax loved. Even so, tonight, Wax found it hard to keep his mouth from watering as Deux
set a personal quiche—cooked with fresh eggs—at every plate. Inlaid with red pepper flakes and asparagus, sprinkling with green onion and steaming, the offering suggested no small award had gone to Noctia’s traders that day.
Then again, this was the first meal in more than a week that the whole group had been together. Bliss and Torny, paired off as they often were, held the left side. Their fingers flashed beneath the table at one another, Wax only catching some of the conversation but needing no more to guess at the jokes flying back and forth. Plans, too, for later parties at one of Noctia’s endless revels.
Parties Wax would’ve crashed if it’d been a month or two ago. The jubilation felt wrong now, at odds with what they’d been through, with what was being visited on the isles by the fiends. When Wax had confronted Bliss with the same, she’d delivered a defiant rebuke, signing that if they were going to die, then better have their fun now.
After that, she’d stopped asking Wax to come along.
To Wax’s right sat Quik, more distant than ever, but at least no longer reeking with disappointment. He’d been even more a ghost, disappearing for days at a time. Deux muttered that it’d taken multiple messengers to even find Quik and deliver the invitation. As to what his brother had been doing, that marked Wax’s post-dinner agenda. Information gathering on his wayward Guardian.
Eujo, at least, filled Wax’s schedule with less abrasive opportunity. She used her royal rank and their mutual Renewal status to score dinner and lunch with well-to-do Najahn and city dwellers, all loving the chance to boost their reputations with the Renewals’ presence while salving their consciences by helping the pair to a meal, to a gift of some useless trinket, or a promise of future aid should either one become the Aegis.
Wax held back a grin as the meals, the shows, the invitations blurred by. At first he’d been nervous, until Wax realized everyone on Noctia expected him to know nothing of civilized society. They expected a bumbling Vis, lost and confused away from the jungle. Once set, Wax found a devious distraction in playing into and then destroying the idea, leaving the hosts, the other guests in turns offended or delighted.
The latter were the ones that gave the next invite, usually asking Wax to do the same, to prove Noctia’s assumptions false. That those people often came from other isles surprised Eujo and Wax not at all.
The Kance Queen, meanwhile, kept her regal mouth shut, playing the diplomat. She praised the wind isle, pushed merchants and artisans to send their business Kance’s way, and acted in every way like the ambassador Wax supposed she was.
Until, late at night, they would return to this ship and collapse in their respective cabins, mocking their oblivious hosts the entire way.
“So you’re ready, then?” Quik asked, shaking Wax from his quiche and the reverie it brought along. “Back to the Renewal?”
The question came without hooks, honesty his brother’s foremost currency.
“She is,” Wax said, nodding at Eujo, who frowned. “And she needs Guardians.”
“Not what I asked.”
The whole table looked at him now. Torny at least spelled the stare with a long visit to her wine glass, the red a delicious Kance blend. Bliss matched Eujo’s frown. Deux, at least, offered a supportive nod.
Maybe the captain wouldn’t mind holding fast, an excuse to avoid the wintry seas.
“We don’t have much choice, do we?” Wax asked Quik. “If the other Renewals fail, then we’d be damning the world by giving up.”
News on that score had been hard to determine, but what rumors persisted suggested no Renewal was having an easy time of it. While no isle admitted their Renewal had died, there was no clear leader either. Nobody knocking on Noctia’s door claiming a seat on the throne.
“Still not an answer.”
Always depend on a brother to press for the truth.
“I signed up for this, didn’t I? I’m ready. Are you?”
Quik glanced down at his quiche, as if debating whether he could sneak one more bite in before answering. A quick sigh said otherwise.
“I’m not.” Quik nodded after he said it, whatever doubt may have been there fleeing his soul. “I’m staying here. At least for a while.”
Now the table truly was silent. Wax, at least, not the focus this time. Bliss recovered first, hands flashing an angry, obvious question.
“Because I need to get better,” Quik replied. “The last two isles have been disasters. We’ve only barely survived, and we all have scars for it. The Renewal isn’t supposed to be easy, but we won’t live if this keeps up.”
‘Except now we have a ship,’ Bliss countered. ‘We can sail right to where the skars
are. Easy.’
“So easy,” Torny muttered. “Deux, you have another bottle?”
“On it.” The captain stood, seeming grateful for the chance to get away.
“Until a fiend attacks again, or someone else lays another trap and we’re left alone to lose,” Quik said. “We’re not ready.”
“You heard Wax,” Eujo said. “He is. My ship is. We leave in two days. I would like you to come with us.”
Quik shook his head. “I’ve already made another commitment. I’m joining the Najahn.”
If quiet wrapped the table before, it never had a chance now. Bliss slapped the table. Torny cursed. Wax and Eujo both asked why and what and then how. Quik had answers to them all, gave them patiently, and took more wine when it came, and still more after that until the voices were exhausted and even Bliss’s fingers lay still.
“You gave an oath,” Wax said later, on the vessel’s bow. Sichi, the pink moon, sparkled above the horizon and made a loving look at the Ringed city. “You’re breaking it.”
Quik made no move to deny Wax’s words. “I’m doing what I think is right, Wax. The only thing that might let us live.”
“Sure, until you remember those fiends you just talked about. When one attacks, we won’t have you helping us out.”
“Then stay here. Let me get stronger. We can get more resources, more Guardians. March with, if not an army, then something close to it.” A fire Wax hadn’t seen in too long found Quik as his brother spoke. “I’m not just joining the Najahn, I’m going to try and persuade them to join us too. It’s not enough to watch the Renewal from the sidelines anymore. They have to help.”
“One voice, one Vis voice, isn’t going to get their attention.”
Quik sniffed. “It’s not just any Vis voice. It’s me, brother.”
“Even you, Quik.” Wax, though, saw nothing save determination. He’d seen the same look on Pan’s face before the Great Sana. A choice had been made, and Wax wouldn’t be changing it. “Then promise me something?”
“What?”
“If I need you, if, somehow, you hear I need your help,” Wax said, not quite believing the request as he was making it, but knowing it was necessary all the while, “that you’ll come.”
“You don’t think I would?”
Wax put his hand on his brothers, gripped it hard. “You asked if I was ready in there. Truth is, Quik, the only way I’ll be ready is with all of you standing
beside me.”
“I am. We are. I’ll just be away a while, is all. But when you see those purple cloaks, that black armor coming to escort you home, you’ll thank me.”
If, Wax didn’t say, they managed to live that long.
Athin satchel, his linens, and his gauntlets. The total accounting of Quik’s possessions, all strapped to his person as he climbed Noctia’s cobblestones in the early morning frost. Diligent workers kept the streets pebbled over to keep slipping to a minimum, effort Quik’s Kance boots, taken from a drowned deckhand who wouldn’t need them anymore, appreciated. The footwear felt like a second skin, but lacked Foti weight. Quik felt the same about most things Kance: fancy, sure, but too light and ephemeral to be worth more than decoration.
Except the ships. The ships were as fast, as great as rumored.
The Najahn hit the same mark as Quik reached their portion of the Ringed City. Occupying an entire cliffside, but barring entry to a large gateway halfway up Noctia’s crater wall, the Najahn controlled what some called a city within a city. Like the outposts they ran on every isle, safeguarding every skar for the Renewals, the Najahn operated outside the usual bounds.
And not a soul dared challenge them.
The why came as Quik approached the first gate. Standing outside, fresh into their shift, were Najahn guards in their full regalia. Purple tabards ran their chests and back, draping black armor that ran all curves, as if the soldiers were living blades. In one gauntleted hand, the four guards outside the gate each held a voulge. The spears stood almost as tall as the guards themselves, their curling points adding utility to lethality, able to hook or deflect as needed. On their backs, in various colors, rested chakrams, razor metal discs light enough to throw and mean enough to guarantee you only needed one.
Next to the display, Quik felt his own gauntlets bobbing at his waist. On Vis, with their homespun spears, blowguns, and bows, the gauntlets and their hardened wood claws seemed more than strong enough. They could carve a hanoko’s hide, sure, but against armor like the Najahn wore, Quik wondered if a single blow wouldn’t turn his prized weapons to splinters.
That, though, was why Quik was here. He needed better gear, better training, better everything to deserve his place with Wax. Quik just had to hope his brother would last till Quik could find him again, with all the Najahn and their armory at his back.
Getting through the gate involved showing a letter and the seal inside, one granting Quik entry as a new recruit. The simple paper had been handed to him several days ago not far from these very walls, where the Najahn maintained a civilian office and, with it, a chance for society’s lost souls to find a new path. At least, that’s what the woman outside had said to the passing people, declaring in her purple-and-black that here was an opportunity to turn fear into ferocity, loss into vengeance, and horror into hope.
The words worked on more than a few.
Quik counted eleven in the room when he entered, all standing in the sparse stone chamber. A single Najahn banner with the Circle’s emblem, a gilded black-and-gold chakram in its center, hung on the back wall. The other recruits matched Quik in their shifting nerves, either looking at nothing or everyone, bouncing from foot to foot, or shivering in the cold. Quik, though, lost those affects as he found
a spot in the group and took total stock of it, evaluating his competition as any hunter would and finding one, in particular, that didn’t belong.
“Sawi?” Quik asked, the name blurting out at the sight, one taking a second to recognize her amid the violet robe Sawi already wore. “What . . . ?”
Sawi didn’t seem to share his surprise, offering the same sly smile she shined when she spied some hidden fruit or a swinging path through the jungle. The other recruits, like Quik, had their eyes and ears open, looking around the place like, well, new recruits. Sawi didn’t have the same air, scratching a little at her wrist and resting with her back against the wall opposite the door. As if she knew what to expect, as if she’d not been magically transported from Kitaye that very morning.
Nevertheless, Kitaye held that elders should be respected, and Quik had a few good years on Sawi. The old order brushed off the day’s confusion and let Quik stomp right past the other recruits, none of whom were Vis, right up to Sawi’s side.
“You’ve a story to tell,” Quik said, adopting his older brother tone, the one that used to get answers fast from a rabble eager to avoid punishment or show off their tricks. “So out with it. What are you doing here, wearing that?”
“Nice to see you too, Quik,” Sawi replied, letting the grin fade.
She read him. A once over Quik wouldn’t have noticed save for the same thing happening every time he, Wax, and Bliss walked into anywhere. The people inside, some savvier than others, would slow their motions and evaluate the trio, decide whether they were risks or not, make a call on where they’d come from and what they wanted.
A skill Quik had used on Vis beasts many a time, that he still lacked when it came to people.
“I’m surprised,” Quik said. “That’s all.”
“So am I. Aren’t you supposed to be with Wax?”
“Long story.”
The smile sprang back, “Then maybe we’ll have to meet up some time and share.”
Quik squinted at her. “What’s with you?”
Sawi nodded back towards the room, to the other recruits now watching the pair. “When we’re not performing for an audience, Quik?”
The Vis hunter’s glare at the fresh faces served to turn a good many of them away, but
before he could get back to Sawi, their instructor, greeter, commander—Quik wasn’t sure what term to use—entered the room. Like the guards outside the gate, the man had on his full uniform, clanking along the hard stone to stand before the purple banner. He rested his voulge on the floor, leaning its haft against his shoulder while he removed a scroll case attached to his waist.
The man began by naming everyone in the room, confirming their presence. When the roll call concluded, two names were left unanswered. The man repeated them louder, and when nobody decided to claim a second title for themselves, the man declared them delinquent. As he did, outside in the hall, loud steps echoed as someone acted on the words.
“They’ll soon find themselves brought in to explain their absence,” their leader said, showing no pleasure at the situation. “With good reason, they will begin next week. With bad, they’ll find themselves sweeping the sewers for a month.” He matched eyes with everyone in turn, not shrinking or speeding through any. “Understand this. The Circle, the Najahn, are fair. Just. But we are not lax. We carry the isles, and that is a duty we cannot forsake.”
So far, so typical. Quik could admire the Najahn’s organization, their lethality without obeying their propaganda. He’d made his oath to Wax, and he’d keep it, marching in at the head of a Najahn host to escort him, and that Kance Queen if need be, all the way to the Wound.
“ . . . and you will find yourselves paired through the rotations,” the man continued, shaking Quik from his daydream. “A full year may seem like a long time to learn how the Najahn work, how you will work, but it is a small drop in the rest of your life serving the Circle. Every Tenet you assist will teach you, and when your year is up, the area most suited to your talents will be your home. Best find one you enjoy, as there are no sadder Najahn than those without a true love.”
A true love? Quik glanced at Sawi, hoping to see she thought the same about this drivel as he did. Indeed, she didn’t appear to be listening too closely, though not because of mockery, but instead a distinct concentration. Pondering something, her eyes narrowed to match her tight lips.
What was she doing here?
The Najahn speech then turned to matters ordinary, like food and facilities. Libraries
open to new recruits, armories to visit for gear fittings, training grounds for exercises. This seemed to capture the others more acutely than the rules for their new lives, something Quik would’ve found surprising until he reassessed their outfits.
Young, yes, but not wealthy. Slops, rags, and moldy clothes seemed the dominant fashion. Girl and boy alike bore dirt and soot, hands roughed up with days spent earning a hard keep. Vis had its poor and their betters, yes, but the distance between them seemed so much slimmer than what Noctia propagated.
Up till right then, Quik had been faintly disgusted with the whole practice, the beggars and desperate rushing to the streets to find what they could before some Najahn guard hustled them away. Now, though, he understood: the Najahn had jobs that needed doing, that would only be done by those too lost to refuse them.
He fought off the shudder. Vis wasn’t all the isles. Things were different here.
“The Oath of Allegiance is sacred. Its words will mark your soul, and bind you forever to our calling,” the Najahn man said, his tone changing to the same steel he’d used when calling out the delinquents. “Repeat after me.”
Quik found his voice rising with that of the other recruits, their words filling the chamber as they matched the man’s own, “I pledge fealty to the Circle, the Najahn, and the Seven Isles. I will face our enemies, protect our people, and put all my will to serving their needs, until Noctia takes me into her warm embrace.”
As the last words faded, the Najahn commander gave them all a slow nod before announcing the ceremony’s close. They were all to report to their barracks, find their partners, and learn their first rotation.
“I’ll see you around, Quik,” Sawi said, breezing by him towards the room’s exit.
“Wait,” Quik tried, but Sawi didn’t hesitate a moment, slipping by recruits picking up their gear and making for the same door. “Sawi, just stop.”
She did not, vanishing so fast as to be long gone by the time Quik made it into the hallway, leaving the Vis hunter to be pushed by his peers into his new life.
Torny timed it right, dashed out her tongue and snagged the snowflake as it drifted past, the silky chill tweaking the rose warmth offered by her Noctia leathers, overlaid with belts and pouches. Wrist braces offered compartments aplenty, as did similar loops around her thighs. Did the dress up take time? Absolutely.
Did it make her feel like her most perfect self?
‘Is that it, then?’ Bliss’s fingers morphed off to Torny’s right as they walked Noctia’s port in the late afternoon. ‘Finally have all you need?’
The snow drizzled down amongst the ships, bursting and bustling with the warmer spell to get one more journey in before winter put the northern isles in a deep freeze. Porters angled around the two young women, some throwing consternation their way, looks Torny ignored, just as she always had.
“A good Guardian takes the goods,” Torny replied. “You might be fine with that stick, but I need accessories.”
Bliss, her Foti-bolstered staff lost back on Rana, had found a metal pole cut to her size. She’d been scratching lines into it over their days here, etching Vis and Kitaye sigils and adding a couple razor lines to the end caps. The whole thing was adorable: a personalized smashing stick. Torny didn’t have the heart to tell Bliss any bum with a crossbow could still put the girl down without a sweat.
But then, so long as Torny was around, Bliss wouldn’t have to worry about that sort of thing.
‘And now you have them all?’ Bliss signed back.
“Almost,” Torny replied. True, she’d collected the knives, found a fresh grapple, replenished a stock of various minor poisons and the darts to deliver them. All well and good, ready to brave the Whent wilds. Save one thing. “There’s something I’ve been saving.”
‘Saving? Like, a treasure?’
“Sure, why not. Let’s call it treasure.”
Torny glanced towards the ocean as she replied. Bliss had a way of reading her face, and the fewer questions tossed Torny’s way now, the better. Or else she might reconsider.
“It’s a bit of a walk,” Torny said. “You up for it?”
‘You know where I’m from, right?’
Jungle hikes day in and day out. Bliss would have that endurance. Torny coughed into her glove to hide her own annoyance. Not at Bliss’s reply, no, but at herself for asking the obvious question. Be better. Don’t make mistakes.
Or she might wind up on Foti again, slumming it with lava rocks to earn her dinner.
Bliss kept right on up with Torny as they left the Ringed City’s port district behind. The Najahn quarter loomed behind them, a dominating force so far as afternoon shadows were concerned. All those inscrutable towers leering from the cliffs.
If Bliss knew how many times Torny had taken a closer look inside those places . . .
‘Where are we now?’ Bliss’s hand flashed to Torny’s right as the pair walked
up the rougher street side, smoother cobblestones in the center offering breezy passage to rumbling wagons, porters, and the hissing steam engines puttering them along.
Climbing in the Ringed City meant changing the world around you, a slow morphing from the port district’s greasy business to, here, a residential strip’s stacked houses and sedate shops. Eateries lacked the coarse curses from dirty sailors, instead targeting families and locals with their specials. An inn or two broke up the parade, packed now with long-term stays as travelers found their winter residences.
Yet Torny didn’t linger on any, only pointing things out as Bliss asked. These weren’t where her memories lied, and Noctia changed itself over—even now, in the cold, construction and destruction continued—too fast to give nostalgia a hold.
No, Torny only came awake again as their walk curled around Noctia’s southwestern end. The Ringed City occupied that part of the smallest isle, ...
