The Fire Eye Chosen_Sequel to The Fire Eye Refugee Page 4

  Enos met Kay’s eyes and she could see him fighting a prideful smile. His eyes flickered to his opponent and he glowered as he entered the ring. The crowd was oddly quiet, uncertain what exactly their role in this farce was to be. Kay felt the bad feelings from earlier, the wave of sadness when she’d spoken to Mina, resurfacing.

  “What’s the point of this?” she asked Yamar in a hushed tone as Enos began his preparations, lightly sparring with one of his entourage at the edge of the ring.

  “You know the answer to that,” Yamar answered her wearily.

  “Does this have something to do with Amos?”

  Yamar stared straight ahead. “Enos is aware of how you met. And it was around the time that he learned about that he started taking boxing more seriously.”

  “I wasn’t with Amos because he was a boxer or a fighter.”

  “I know that, Kay, but Enos is still learning. Still learning about the world and his place in it and still learning how to listen to the advice he’s been given.”

  “Meaning you advised against this?”

  Yamar didn’t answer.

  Enos gave her another look and a confident nod which she didn’t return, then he approached the other fighter. The two fighters were so young that Kay had trouble taking the bout seriously. Before they even threw a punch she knew she cared a lot more about neither getting hurt than who won. Enos quickly put any hopes of a painless end to rest when he dodged Devon’s opening jab and struck him hard in the gut and then across his chin. Devon fell back and shook his head, blood smeared across his mouth. He reset his hands, the uncertainty in his eyes blazing. Enos dropped back, grinning and dancing for the crowd.

  The second exchange went just as poorly for Devon as the first, and he took several shots to the ribs before he could extract himself from the clutches of the little demon.

  Kay’s jaw was clenched tightly. Enos was fast and coordinated, the product of the kind of training a member of the Dynasty would have access to. She saw the looks of concern on Devon’s backers, the others wearing the Eagle Talon Gym logo. They knew he was badly overmatched. Maybe this was their passion, maybe just a hobby. Either way they couldn’t compete against the Dynasty. She watched one of them pick up a towel to throw in to end the fight. Another caught his hand and shook his head. Ending the fight early would draw the anger of their opponent and his overqualified entourage. Devon was left to the beating, which Enos continued relentlessly, pausing only to preen around the ring and pointedly not look at Kay.

  She felt sick to her stomach. She knew a bully when she saw one. The thought that this had been partly set up for her made her ill. The idea that Enos, young or not, would think that she would approve of this sanctioned beating of one less fortunate. “Are you going to stop this anytime soon?” she angrily asked Yamar.

  He didn’t look at her as he answered. “I’ve been signaling for him to do that since the very start. It won’t drag on much longer.”

  Kay leaned back in disgust as Enos landed another exchange. She felt a presence at her shoulder and turned to see Joah leaning in from behind her. He had his eyes on the ring, his face solemn. It was a relief to see him, a link to a world she understood better than this one. Joah hadn’t always pursued the missing with an intensity that rivaled Kay’s own, but he’d taken it up a level since Ewan’s death. She wasn’t surprised to see him here. He had the habit of materializing wherever she was.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  With a cautious glance at Yamar, he leaned in closer and spoke in a voice only for her. “The buy is set for tomorrow. Midday.”

  “Good,” she replied. As she turned back to the ring, Enos launched a tremendous uppercut that laid the larger boy on his back, where he flounced once and then stayed down.

  Kay brought her face close to Yamar’s. “I’m not impressed, Yamar. Your job is to keep the Dynasty safe. You think this helps that?” She gestured to the crowd. “You think they’re impressed?” Indeed, the crowd was divided, some cheering loudly for the victor and the savage beating he’d delivered, others looking towards the young fighter on the ground with concern and rumblings of anger. As bloodthirsty as they were, they hadn’t come here to watch a young man’s career end in front of them.

  Yamar’s jaw was set in anger. “There are forces at the Palace that argue for stronger measures than mere fists to demonstrate the Dynasty’s power. When you’ve wrestled with them on a daily basis for years, then you can lecture me on how I do my job.” He was glaring, not at her or Enos, but at one of the Dynasty entourage, a bald man with a tightly trimmed beard, who was returning the dark look.

  “I’m not seeing much progress,” Kay said. “I though Enos might usher in some change. And I’m not impressed. Let’s go, Joah.”

  “Wait,” Yamar said, sudden alarm in his voice, but Kay was up and headed down the aisle. She didn’t bother looking back to see Enos with his hands raised in victory.

  The chill night air outside calmed her a bit. The Fire Eye sat above, a few stray lanterns still journeying across the sky. Joah waited patiently at her side. Kay stared upwards for a long time, then slowly turned her gaze to the west, farther outside the city walls where an old, worn road traveled to the site of the old Farrow refugee camp.

  “Up for a walk?” she asked quietly.

  Chapter 3. Silent Horses

  It didn’t take them long to reach the Farrow graveyard, boots shuffling through the long grasses as they left the main road. Away from Celest’s tall buildings, the Fire Eye appeared low in the sky, somehow fatter and more present than Kay remembered. It bathed the quiet tombstones in an orange light. The city walls were visible behind Kay and Joah, straggling lanterns fighting the high winds.

  The Farrow buried their dead, a practice strange and unwelcome to the Gol. When the Dynasty refused them the right to do so within Celest, portions of the former refugee camp were set aside to house the dead. In Kay’s opinion, the camp was a fitting place for them. There was little else left, just the canvas of old tents, pieces too torn to be salvaged, which flapped in the breeze while clinging to the remnants of rotted wooden frames. Trees were few and far between among the gently rolling hills, and most were barren as though they too were abandoned.

  Kay walked silently through the rows of tombstones, headed to the newest expansion on the southern end. Joah paced her, leaving her a cushion of privacy. He held a loaded crossbow, eyes alertly scanning the horizon.

  She knelt before a marble tombstone, standing straight and clean among its crooked and weathered brethren. The grass had grown quickly where there had been only dirt six weeks ago.

  EWAN SILAS

  YEAR 906-975

  27 Years a Decorated Farrow Guard

  Kay absently plucked a leaf off the tombstone. She recalled approaching Ewan after the gates were opened to the Farrow about him coming to work for her. She’d sensed the awkward gap between them, and it’d hit her then how little she’d truly known him. It had only been days they’d spent together, though perhaps the most important days in her life. When she’d been arrested for setting fires in her hometown of Ferris, facing crowds hungry for blood. Days where, had every hand touching her broken soul been unkind, it may have remained fractured forever. But there had been a few kind hands there. Ewan and his late wife Lilith. Still, just days. A few days from a lifetime. So she hadn’t truly known Ewan when she asked him to work for her. And he had barely known her. Each had taken a chance on the other.

  Their first case together had been a rough one. A crystal shroud dealer had his claws in deep and refused to let a young noblewoman go without a ransom. Kay had learned the towering anger and violence that balanced out Ewan’s tenderness. She’d seen it loosed upon the muscle the dealer had sent after his prize as Kay and the former cop pulled the girl out into the night on the bad end of Bridge Street. Kay had shown Ewan her dark side as well, not that he was surprised to find she had one. They got along well after that.

  Ewan guided Kay, filling in fo
r her lack of formal training. His experience in the Farrow Guard made him privy to a deeper understanding of what unexpected and hidden resources Kay could pry from the Celest Home Guard. Between the maturing of Joah and Ewan’s contributions, Kay’s shop had grown stronger and deeper even after Abi left to pursue her own agenda. They took on a broader and more varied caseload, notching win after win, building their strength together. Until this latest batch had come along and fucked everything up. Now Ewan was dead, his murderer free, and the case files still open. Kay missed him fiercely.

  Her eyes were drawn to a single lantern floating by. Separated from its peers, it looked lonely, at the mercy of the high winds. Untethered. Ewan had been the only one who still knew Kay from her old life. The time she’d spent growing up in an orphanage. Her life-altering descent into the madness of a firesetter, a torch. Back then her name had been Keara. With Ewan gone, only a few remained who knew that name, and none who’d ever really met her when that had been her only face.

  She patted the tombstone with a hand that felt heavy, then stood and turned to the older section of the graveyard. Joah shadowed her as she walked among the rows again until she came to another modest gravestone, matched by its brothers and sisters all around. The light was not as good in this section and she looked around for a moment. Seeing no one but Joah and the other grave markers to watch her, Kay reached within herself and drew out a spark.

  The small flame hovered above her palm, casting its dancing light over the tombstone. She felt the hot flush the magic brought out in her, an enhanced awareness of the beating of her heart, the thrumming of her blood in her face. It had been four years since she’d taken the spark of another to enhance her own flawed magic. Years in which she’d learned some measure of control over her own frustratingly weak powers. She’d learned to summon small flames and move them with a fair degree of control, but her strength and range were limited, and it provided her with little advantage. Especially since she needed to keep it hidden from all but her closest allies.

  Focusing carefully on the flame, she left it floating near the tombstone as she lowered her hand to her side.

  AMOS FARR

  YEAR 944–973

  Pathfinder and Hero of the Winden War

  The memories that the fight had summoned brought pain. Four years ago tonight, she’d first seen Amos. He’d saved her life the next day. She’d returned the favor countless times. The stoic Farrow had stayed by her side for a long journey back to their homeland, back to the city of Ferris. It was supposedly in the hands of the Winden, the people who had slaughtered and chased the Farrow into Gol lands, to the gates of Celest. When Kay and Amos had arrived at the city they’d both been born in, it was nothing but ashes. It was burned to the ground. No sign of the Winden. In fact, they hadn’t been seen anywhere since their pursuit of the Farrow into Gol lands.

  Kay and Amos had returned to Celest together, their shared quest for vengeance unsatisfied. They’d fallen into something like normalcy, her resuming her work as a fetch, he often helping, but also called away for long scouting trips with the Pathfinders, who maintained their status as a martial order. It was on one of these trips Amos had fallen ill and died.

  Kay fussed over his tombstone, picking at the moss which had settled along the edges. The Pathfinders maintained their section of the graveyard well, but the passage of time had stained Amos’s marker, and Kay silently vowed to come back and clean it. Once she’d found Jenna and the other missing children. Amos would understand. He always had.

  She wasn’t sure which she noticed first, the shift in Joah’s stance or the overwhelming quiet. She let the flame extinguish and rose to her feet, her hand straying to the baton on her belt. A moment later, Joah turned swiftly, raising the crossbow into firing position.

  “Hold,” a man called out of the darkness. He struck a match and brought it to his lantern. Gillis Stern, the leader of the Pathfinders, was seated on a horse between them and the graveyard entrance. Once Joah had nodded and lowered the crossbow, he urged his horse forward. Now Kay could feel others on all sides. The Pathfinders could cloak themselves in quiet when they needed to. The truly impressive thing was that they could coax their horses to do the same. The nag on which Gillis rode made no sound at all as its hooves touched the ground. “We need a word with the fetch.”

  He dismounted and walked past Joah. “Careful with that thing,” he said quietly. “You might shoot one of the trees.”

  “I’ve been practicing,” Joah replied with a mocking threat in his voice.

  “How many poor souls have you slain as they attempted to collect your stray arrows?” Gillis hid a smile beneath his mustache. He approached Kay, meeting her eyes. When they were facing each other, an arm’s length apart, he turned to look at Amos’s tombstone. “The fallen hold your attention this evening?”

  Kay didn’t answer.

  Gillis reached out and placed his hand on the tombstone. In a loud voice he called out, “My brother scouts the farthest horizon. He braves the mountain pass between this world and the next, and, when we join him, he will have a fire waiting.”

  There was a response from the other Pathfinders on all sides, a subdued mixture of affirmative grunts and shouts.

  “I haven’t heard that before,” Kay said. “I like it.”

  “Yes,” Gillis said. “I do too.” He turned away from the tombstone, removing his hand, and looked at her with piercing eyes. “We need to talk.”

  Kay nodded cautiously.

  “The Dynasty still withholds leave for us to carry blades. I’ve lost men and women on the roads, doing good work on behalf of the Gol.” The Pathfinders received no guidance, no acknowledgement from the Dynasty and were left to set their own course.

  “You don’t need to convince me, Gillis. But what would you have me do about it? I don’t set Dynasty policy.”

  “But you have access to them.”

  “Through the servant’s entrance. And not at the Palace. I’ve done what I can to try and shift them on policy issues before. It takes a long time and I’ve had far more failures than successes.”

  “When’s the last time you met with the Wrang?”

  Kay shifted uncomfortably. “I was with Yamar earlier tonight.”

  “I have sought countless meetings with Yamar over the past six months. I am denied every time. He stood with us when we rescued the Dynasty child. He should understand our value. But he does nothing.” Gillis’s fists were clenched in anger. “Can you speak with him on our behalf?”

  “I can speak with Yamar, yes. It may take time, though. I definitely lost some favor with the Dynasty over the past few hours.”

  “If you had it to lose, it can be regained.” He looked at Amos’s tombstone, then back at Kay, his face soft with a pity Kay didn’t welcome.

  “Gillis,” she asked, breaking the brief silence, “have you seen any smuggling of Gol girls out of Celest? And boys, I suppose?”

  “Bound for where?”

  “I’m not sure. There are just too many missing right now and I can’t piece together where they are going.”

  “If you are concerned about the flesh trade, it flows towards Celest, not away from it. We’ve seen our share of kidnapped Farrow pressed into labor outside the city, but no Gol. Too much risk.”

  “Let me know if you see anything.” She looked back at the city walls, just visible in the distance. Some of the higher buildings had irregular flashes of light issuing from their summits. It had become fashionable to mount rounded mirrors and project beams of light out across the city, using a codified pattern known as ma-lumens to send messages. It was a fashion Kay could do without. She saw it as buildings fighting for attention against the Fire Eye. She frowned as she faced Gillis. “I’ll talk with Yamar. But if you have a vision of things changing overnight, I think you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “I can only ask for your efforts, Kay. Have you learned who put a price on your head?”

  “No. But I haven’t had anyon
e come calling for it.”

  “We will keep our ears open, as best we can. And leave you your privacy. Be well.” Gillis made a gesture and started slowly backing away as the other Pathfinders stepped into the light of the lantern. Kay had seen this particular ritual before. Among the Pathfinders, it was considered bad form to take part in a meeting without ever showing oneself, and so there was a brief parade of faces, men and women, all Farrow, guiding their silent horses into the light one by one. Kay gave each a short nod, fighting a twinge of pain when she saw the face of one of their youngest, Jaime Cowen. He was the one who had brought her news of Amos’s death. His eyes were on the ground, as they’d been every time she’d seen him since that day.

  When they’d finished, Gillis led the group out of the graveyard, the light retreating with him. Joah was at Kay’s side. He hefted the crossbow back up into firing position and pointed it at the departing Pathfinder leader. “Think I can knock the lantern out of his hand?”

  “Hit or miss, you might start a war.”

  “I’ll bet if I hit it he’d think it was pretty cool.” He mimicked pulling the trigger. “I have been practicing.”

  Kay gave a laugh. It only carried a short distance before being swallowed by the darkness. “Tell me about tomorrow’s buy. What are we walking into?”

  “It seems as if the buyer Clemens was referencing is our old friend Vascal. And he is keenly interested in purchasing a young Gol girl, no questions asked. We’re meeting them both tomorrow in the Lagoons. Only question is, are you posing as the sale? Otherwise I could see what Abi is up to?”

  Kay snorted. “Probably up to her neck in finery and ritual. I’ll pose. And if Vascal gets close enough to lay hands on me, I’ll break a couple fingers.”

  “Well, try and wait until after he gives us some hint where the girls he buys go. Then you can break as many fingers as you want.”

  Without taking her eyes off the now distant Pathfinders, Kay raised another spark, letting the flame dance between her hands. She turned back to Amos’s grave and again sent the flame to hover near it. “He scouts the farthest horizon. I like that.”