Ashes on the Wind

Notibus Ravia’s funeral took place in the inner courtyard of Fort Tinuso.

Under the same eclipse that had already lasted two days and made the city look like a gray-stained picture. The ground was still damp from the previous night’s rain, and the fort’s assistants — men who had always worked in the administrator’s shadow — dug in silence the grave where the decapitated body of their late master would rest.

No priest was invited and there was no prayer at the farewell. Ravia departed as he had lived, in a silence that matched his aura of discreet authority. Imposing without being ostentatious, and in his own house.

Daniel watched from a distance, hands clasped behind his back, while one of the assistants used a shovel to cover the simple wooden coffin. What remained was a silence that marked the end of an era.

For years, Fort Tinuso had stood as a bastion of order amid the chaos of territorial disputes between the leaders of clandestine guilds in the Outer Ring. Now, with Ravia dead and war declared against Senator Prebito, the fort would fall under Grace’s command — even if only provisionally.

If his situation were not so tragic, Daniel might have laughed at the irony of a foreigner taking the reins of a power structure almost as old as the Empire itself.

When the men finished, he dismissed them with a nod and remained there a while longer, contemplating the turned earth. The past was finally buried, and there was nothing more he could do to change his fate.

Another irony, to be sure. I came to this world hoping to chart my own destiny and now, by imposition, I am the only leadership left for the climax of this struggle.

Daniel Grace cursed his luck.

Arcus Ciusennus might have accepted the charge, but the leader of the Scarlet Mask was more feared than loved. Besides, he did not wish to commit himself. The traveler from another world was by nature a stranger, unknown to most of the surviving gang leaders and crime bosses from the previous night, but precisely for that reason there was no open hatred against him.

Add to that the abrupt fall of numerous leaders in the battle against La Farfalla, his role as public opponent of Prebito, and the public support of the King of Beggars, and the stage was set. Grace clicked his tongue, shook his head, and then followed the fort’s dark corridors to find Sorcha.

My fortress. As Ravia once told him. At least for now…

The gunslinger lay on a narrow straw-mattresses cot in the fort infirmary. The brown duster, stained with blood, was folded beside her bed, and an improvised dressing covered the left side of her face.

“I figured you’d come” she said, turning onto her side to face Grace with a single eye. “This Fidenzio de Lio… so he was only the mask of a decadent noble. All along, you were the one I needed to speak to.”

“Daniel Grace” the Custos Tecit nodded in introduction, “agent of the Convergence, if you prefer.”

Sorcha gave a low, rough laugh without joy.

“Irony, don’t you think? I spent half my life hunting people like you: other mercenaries, spies, conspirators. Now we’re on the same side.”

“Perhaps because the enemy is bigger than all of us” Daniel said with a shrug, as if an entire past of divergences no longer mattered. And in truth, with Ordinem Finis’s survival in the balance, the rest was trivial. “How’s the wound?”

“I lost an eye to that bitch!” Sorcha swore, adjusting the kerchief at her neck. “But Sallustia gave her what she deserved.”

Daniel allowed fragments of the battle in the underground hall to project before his eyes. The assassin’s incredible speed when she pierced Gupta’s chest before anyone understood what was happening. He remembered Sallustia too, covered in blood, striking the final blow that took the life of one of the most fearsome enemies they had faced thus far.

“La Farfalla wasn’t normal in that fight. There was a strange madness in her eyes. Something that made her fight as if hell itself were pushing her forward.”

Sorcha nodded slowly.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Grace regarded her in silence.

“Now I know who you are” the pistoleer went on. “What you are: an agent of the Convergence; we have to talk about the Yellow Turbans… they’re plotting something bigger. I saw them considering an alliance with the Beholders.”

“Monsters?” Daniel frowned.

“From the depths of the Warlock’s Crypt. They say those creatures guard a passage down there — something too ancient to understand. The occultists want to forge a pact with them, and I might be able to find out when the next meeting will be. A good chance to finish them all at once!”

“Then do it” Daniel drew a breath. “For now, I have to keep this fort standing… and win the elections for the Coins. Without Ravia, everything’s more complicated. The duties I could have delegated to an experienced ally like him, I’ll have to handle alone.”

Sorcha studied him for a moment, her good eye gleaming under the weak torchlight.

“You knew, didn’t you? That Ravia was a Hexblood.”

“I did.” Daniel thought of the freshly closed grave, still dark with wet soil.

“What are they, anyway?” the gunslinger asked.

“A vampire. More or less.”

“And what would a vampire be?” she pressed.

Damn fantasy world that still hasn’t developed a gothic-horror subculture, so people get the universal legends without my having to explain them…

“A hexblood is someone who carries in the body the legacy of an ancient plague” Daniel explained slowly. “The black lines on their skin are proof of their immortality, strength beyond human, but also of a constant hunger. They feed on blood, and there’s only one way to kill one of them: decapitation.”

Sorcha touched the dressing on her face.

“That’s why they cut off his head.”

“Yes…” the traveler from another world narrowed his eyes. “But that makes me think of Vel’Shaad… Since you’re theoretically working with us, you’d best know at once: Prebito, La Farfalla, the Yellow Turbans — we believe there’s a greater force behind them all, and it’s called Ultio Fatidica. An organization that’s been the Convergence’s enemy for over seven hundred years. They’re led by Vel’Shaad, and all this talk about hexbloods made me wonder: is he the same man all this time? Or just a title passed down the generations?”

“If he’s lived that long” Sorcha shrugged, “he’s not someone I want to meet alone.”

Daniel let the subject drop for now.

“And the others?” the pistoleer asked.

“Sallustia is recovering. As always, at an impressive pace. The doctors say she’ll be able to fight again soon. This time the injuries weren’t so deep.”

“The woman’s made of steel” Sorcha muttered, rolling her eye.

“Thanatos is still shaken by Gupta’s death” Daniel continued. “And Lais had only minor injuries. What remains in her is pure anger.”

“Anger?” Sorcha raised an eyebrow.

“She told me Gupta said something before dying. Not to imitate his sacrifice. That the best thing mercenaries can do is try to survive. That was his final message.”

The gunslinger fell silent for a moment.

“And how do you feel?”

“I…” Daniel took a moment to answer. “I knew there would be sacrifices. Always knew. But I didn’t think a mercenary would give his life to save mine.”

“Did he believe in the cause?”

“I think he believed in more than that. Deep down he believed we could save the Empire.”

“And you?” she asked, watching the doubt grow on Grace’s face. “Do you think it’s possible?”

Daniel thought again of Ravia’s freshly closed grave. He remembered the sky covered by the eclipse, heavy over the distant towers of the Senatorial Ring, where Senator Prebito gathered his power like a fat hound upon the Empire’s bones.

“After everything I’ve seen… everything I’ve done…” he said at last. “When a man like Gupta dies believing this place can be saved… then I think there’s nothing left for me to do but carry on. Whether the Empire has passed the point of no return. We share the same entanglement in the threads of fate.”

Neither spoke for a time. Sorcha pressed the bandage over her lost eye and winced.

“Well, today’s not the day we find out.”

“No.” Daniel nodded. “Today, we only have Fort Tinuso to keep standing. Tomorrow, perhaps the Empire.”

“And here I thought my life was complicated” she said with a short, humorless laugh.

“Welcome to Grand-Devana. The center of the world… and of all its problems.”

They remained there, each lost in their thoughts, while the eclipsed sun sank slowly behind the walls of Fort Tinuso.