Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Nine

Tali

Kaltoren, Drasken

12th of Satimus

Tali stood at the end of the landing pad on the Kronhus's thundership harbour, watching the sleek outline of her uncle's ship spear towards the horizon. With him went her freedom, and any hope of joining him in a life not dictated by those she needed to look to for protection.

It was mid-morning, and a biting drizzle lashed at the towering heights, spraying her with rainwater. Overhead, angry black clouds promised an afternoon storm, and Tali wondered idly if her uncle's ship would encounter any problems on the way back to the Fensidium's headquarters, deep within the Maz-Dunzhin Mountains to the far north.

She turned away from the empty sky and faced the empty landing pad, devoid now of the staff who'd readied Maelstrom for its flight. As always, she was alone, here at the end of the world.

Her uncle's cadre had only been in Kaltoren for a scant few days before Heller had decided it was time to return to their superior, Sudarium, and share with him all they'd discovered in fighting the Novhar and questioning Katja. As awestruck as Tali had been with Drasken's capital, and as welcoming a presence the Jalin had proven, she'd wanted nothing more than to join her uncle. As much as she'd wanted to go with her father when he'd left for the Imperium, a lifetime ago now.

But she'd been left behind, as she always was.

She made her way back towards the main pillar of the Kronhus, pulling the collar of her coat tight around her shoulders to shield against the rain. The Kronhus, it turned out, was the tower to which the Keizerin's palatial stormking, Risyán, was attached. It was the closest thing to a true palace Kaltoren had, and the wing Heller and his cadre had inhabited, though only a handful of rooms, was the size of her father's entire estate on Alzikanem. She'd been told the Varkommer themselves—the ten individuals who shared governance of the Drasken Empire—lived within the Kronhus's immense sprawl, though she'd not seen or spoken to anyone outside her uncle's cadre since Katja's interrogation.

She'd be moved to Ren Câdern's tower in the next few days, ready to begin her education there. The thought of it all made her stomach jump, and though she knew it was absurd to be afraid of school when she'd faced down a Novhar, she couldn't help but think of this as the greater challenge. In all her sixteen years she'd only ever been tutored by Shira. She'd never even met anyone her own age, let alone learned alongside and coexisted with them. To her, a class of youths was far more intimidating than any monstrous immortal.

By instinct, her hands rose to her head and covered her stunted Dontili horns. Would she be viewed as an outsider, a disgrace, as she'd been in the Imperium? Were the other races accepted here, and were half-breeds tolerated? Would her parentage earn her ridicule, because her father was an Imperial arch-general and had recently invaded Kalduran, a Drasken province? Perhaps, like the omission of her mother's Novhar identity, she should keep the identity of her father hidden as well.

Alone as she now was, and with no sign she was yet expected at the College, she wound down through the tower's labyrinthine innards. She couldn't face returning to the rooms she and her uncle's cadre had shared, not when she knew she wouldn't see them again for a long time. Instead, she decided to make the arduous trip from the Kronhus's peak, from where the Maelstrom had alighted, to its base, a descent of about two hundred storeys. She'd been told the Kronhus was the tallest of Kaltoren's cloud-piercing towers, and that all of them were supported by a Surrekan engine far larger and more complex than those that powered thunderships.

The first evening she'd been in the city, she'd looked out of her room's balcony and seen the night sky set ablaze by clusters of lights so bright she'd at first been convinced a constellation had fallen from the sky. The illuminated masses, each easily half the size of Risyán, levitated above the peak of every tower, and pulsed as if with a faint heartbeat. She imagined Kaltoren, from a distance, looked like its own small universe, each of the engines a sun hung above the metropolis they powered.

They'd been created by Novhar, she'd been told. The apparent extinction of those immortals meant no new towers could be built, and thundership engines, which were created in the same way, were a finite resource the Drasken Empire treasured beyond all else. She wondered how Drasken would react if it knew at least one Novhar yet lived, and the shaping of new Surrekan engines was therefore possible.

The descent took her an hour, and she wasn't challenged once. As limited as she'd been before now, either confined to her rooms in Sinnis and Verden or held captive aboard Katja's Rabid Dog, this freedom of movement was liberating. But it wasn't authentic freedom. It would never be authentic.

In the vaulting hallway serving as the Kronhus's entrance, Tali wove through the ranks of red-coated guards without issue, eventually finding herself on a wide street out in the city beyond. She suspected the Jalin had ordered the redcoats to let her be, but just in case any decided it would be best to escort her, she sped up and dove into the heaving press of people flocking the streets.

Her only prior experience with large settlements being Sinnis, where she'd seen a mage murdered and almost been murdered herself, the more organised, less chaotic expanse of Kaltoren was equally overwhelming. The buildings on either side of the ramrod straight street were tall and looming, far more opulent than the ramshackle affairs offered by Sinnis, and almost uniformly constructed of gleaming white stone that sparkled with the drizzle. The street she walked was far wider than anything found within Sinnis's disordered sprawl, paved with flat, smooth stones where Sinnis had been trampled mud and dirt. Her eyes skimmed across the rows of buildings on either side of her, alighting on shops selling more wares than she'd ever thought existed.

And the people. So many people. More than she'd ever seen in one place. Even the gatherings in Sinnis's market square, first when the mage had been executed, and again when Lord Indro had addressed the crowd, paled in comparison to the infinite tide that snared her now. Though most were the pale-skinned humans she knew comprised the bulk of the population, there were enough Dontili, Vasipan, and dark-skinned Dunstrians to lessen some of the self-consciousness her small horns and greyish skin inspired. Too many diverse people bustled here for her to stick out, and the observation comforted her just as much as it made her feel small and insignificant.

She was jostled about like a leaf caught in a river's current, her shoulders knocked aside so often she wasn't sure how she kept her feet. One hand fell to her coat pocket, and she tightened her fist around the coin purse Heller had given her before he departed, suddenly aware she provided a likely target for thieves. The purse was heavy with the thick, round coins her uncle had called kuldas, which she understood to be the highest denomination of Drasken coinage. Unlike the coins of Sinnis, stamped with Lord Indro's profile, these coins were marked with the emblem of the Varkommer—a globe surrounded by ten tiny, expertly rendered crowns.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to spend them on; everything she needed for her impending education had been covered by the Jalin, including a new wardrobe of Drasken-appropriate clothes and the robe-like uniform she'd been told the College favoured. The city itself was already proving far too large and labyrinthine to explore in search of shops, not that Tali even knew what she'd spend her allowance on. Growing up in her father's isolated estate, lacking no necessities and not even really aware of what luxuries one might frivolously spend money on, she questioned her uncle's decision in gifting her the kuldas.

The cloying press of people suffocated her, and she angled herself towards a smaller side-street. The light drizzle thickened as she walked, and her feet skidded along the slick paving underfoot. She wrenched her hand from her pockets to steady herself, then turned in a circle to regard her surroundings. With the Kronhus claiming total control of the skyline, she doubted she'd get lost in its shadow, but this strange city had inspired paranoia within her. Besides, so many sky-piercing spires bristled within Kaltoren's expanse, she worried that she risked confusing them for each other.

A weight lifted from her coat, knocking her from her thoughts. The slash of a fleeing form at the edge of her vision punctuated the jarring emptiness in her pocket where her coin pouch had sat; she jolted into a sprint before she could consider her actions. As meaningless as the money was to her, her uncle had given her those coins, and they were all she had of him. She'd meant to cling to them like childish talismans.

The thief bolted down the length of the side-street, shouldering people aside with reckless abandon and pulling stalls and crates down in their wake to falter her. She was suddenly grateful for all Shira's rigorous training as she vaulted the obstacles and continued her pursuit unhindered. Sometimes, in her deep boredom on Alzikanem, she'd run laps around the island to improve her stamina, and she was able to close the distance with the thief now, her arms outstretched as she tried to grab their coat. They veered out of her grasp, turning so sharply into another side-street, she overshot the opening and stumbled to a stop. By the time she'd righted herself, the thief had gained twenty feet.

She bunched her hands into fists as she ran, and a flicker of magic warmed the pit of her stomach. It would be easy enough to hurl a fireball at the thief, but what if she killed them? What if she caught an innocent bystander in her attack? What if she accidentally set the wooden stalls and shop fronts alight? As frustrating as it was to ignore her most potent advantage, she'd need to do this without aasiur.

Though she was faster, the thief kept them distanced by leading her on a wild chase through Kaltoren's back alleys, far more familiar with the terrain than Tali. The streets narrowed further, the houses lost their wealthy lustre, and the pleasant shops she'd seen along the main street outside the Kronhus were replaced with smashed windows and ruined stalls. It didn't feel like she'd been in pursuit for long, but already the leering central tower was lost to the crowded overhang above her, and she realised she'd stumbled into an entirely different district. A slum, of sorts.

She tore into yet another narrow opening. There were no shops down here, only the sheer walls of the buildings on either side, rising ahead in a dead end. The thief had stopped at the far end, drawn up against the wall and facing her now, one hand latched over the pocket she knew contained her stolen coins, the other resting on their hip, where a crude dagger was sheathed.

A boy, no older than her. His clothes weren't bedraggled and his figure not spindly with malnutrition, which Tali took to mean he wasn't as poverty-stricken as she might assume of a thief. Not stealing to survive, then.

"You have something of mine," she said, deepening her voice. She paced towards him, hoping she looked intimidating. She'd inherited some of her father's domineering height, though on her teenage frame it looked more gangly than powerful.

"Don't think so." The boy pulled out his blade, and the movement sparked Tali's aasiurmancy again. She could attack him, she thought. There was no one else down here, and if her fire killed him, then so what? He was a thief, of little worth. She'd be doing the city a favour by removing him.

No, she couldn't think like that. If she used her power to freely murder, as she'd done in Sinnis, then where would she draw the line? She'd let herself become a monster, no better than the Karhes slavers. The only difference between them and her would be that they, at least, kept their victims alive.

If she'd had any aasiurmantic training, perhaps she could've incapacitated the young thief. Instead, she lowered her hand to her own hip, concealed by the fall of her coat, and made as if to reach for a weapon that wasn't there. "Give it back and we won't have any issues."

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The boy nodded his head at her, his eyes locked over her shoulder. "Don't think so," he repeated.

Another figure loomed behind her, shrouded by the light spilling in through the alley's mouth. A blade, longer than the first thief's dagger, extended from one hand, and they advanced upon Tali like a triumphant predator. It was another boy, a little older than the first, broad-shouldered and scar-faced like a fighter.

"I think we 'ave issues, girl," the second thief lisped. When he stopped a few paces away from her and flashed a grin, she noticed two of his teeth had been knocked out. A careless fighter, then, and dangerous for it. "Shouldn't've followed 'im down 'ere."

She stood resolute, squaring her shoulders into what she hoped was marginally menacing. "He stole from me."

"Everyone's fair game in this city," the older boy said with another broken smile.

Her back prickled, and she knew the first thief now slunk up on her unprotected rear. Before he could sink his little dagger into her, she leapt forward and grabbed at the older boy's hand. His blade had been held down, unprepared to attack, so she wrestled the weapon from his grip, manoeuvred herself around him, and pressed it to his throat. Shira wouldn't have been impressed with her sloppy technique, but she'd succeeded.

The first thief halted, unsure.

"I'll cut his throat," Tali said.

"You won't," the younger boy squeaked.

She nicked her captive's neck just enough to draw a bead of blood. A strangled cry of surprise squeezed from his mouth. "I will if you don't give me back my money," she said.

The three of them poised on a knife's edge, literally. The younger boy made no move to comply, and she was about to force herself to make good on her threat when a figure dropped down between them, appearing as if from nowhere. At first, Tali thought the Novhar had found her again, and prepared to throw her captive at him and flee. Instead, the figure rose and resolved into a girl her own age, clad in a finely cut fur-lined coat, a sharp smile slashed across sharper features.

The newcomer raised calming hands to Tali, then turned to the younger boy. "Now, is that any way to treat a guest new to the city?"

"She attacked 'im," the boy said, using his dagger to point at Tali.

"Not without cause, I don't doubt." The girl snapped a hand out. "Give me what you took."

The boy hissed. "Ren, please. It's mine, by rights."

The girl poked the boy in the chest. With a grunt, he deposited Tali's coin pouch into her palm.

"Your turn," she said, shifting her focus to Tali.

Tali reluctantly raised the blade and let the older boy go. She threw his weapon at him and presented her hands, expecting an attack, but he reclaimed his property and stalked away, the younger boy on his heels.

The girl moved up to Tali, one eyebrow cocked as she assessed her. She handed back the coin pouch. "You're welcome."

"I didn't need your help," Tali replied as she slipped the pouch back into her coat pocket.

"You were about to kill two kids whose worst crime was thinking they could outsmart you. I saved you the hassle." She thrust her hand out, and what Tali took for a strike was actually the offer of a handshake. She accepted it warily, the other girl's grip strong and firm. "Name's Renna Westervelt." She rolled her eyes at Tali's shock of recognition. "Yes, those Westervelts. Don't worry, everyone has the same look when I give them my name. We're all fully aware of who my mother is and how disgraced my name is."

This was Katja's daughter, then. The one born out in the Karhes and stolen by Katja's father.

"I'm Tali," she said.

"Just Tali?"

No good giving her family name when it would connect her to whatever war crimes her father might've committed down in Kalduran. Not that she could lay claim to 'Boratorren' anyway, given her illegitimacy. "Just Tali."

"Well, then." Renna canted her head to the side and released Tali's hand. "Perhaps I should escort you to somewhere a bit less fraught." She made a show of offering her arm. When Tali made no move to accept, Renna shrugged and headed off towards the alley's mouth.

Tali trailed along behind, unsure if it was wise to follow this girl. The thieves had known and obeyed her. What if Renna was leading her into another trap? As she paced in the other girl's wake, she realised how hopelessly lost she'd gotten herself in her blind pursuit, how trapped she would've been even if she'd overpowered the two boys and reclaimed her coin pouch. Renna led her back out onto the larger side-streets, and eventually the Kronhus peeked out between ramshackle roofs.

"Why did you intervene?" she found herself asking when the silence became too strained.

Renna glanced across at her, the corner of her mouth curved upwards. "I used to be a damn good thief, so I saw how bungled their attempt was. Only fair you get your stuff back when they cock it up so badly." She steered them out onto the main street, the one flanking the Kronhus. To make herself heard over the clamour, Renna leaned in close. "Besides, got to keep the Jalin's soon-to-be star pupil safe."

Tali halted in her tracks, wondering which direction this conversation would take. If Renna knew her as the girl the Jalin had taken on, she'd also already know of Tali's encounter with Katja. As if following her thoughts, Renna raised her hands in a calming gesture again, making Tali feel like a feral animal.

"Hey, I don't really care about any of that," she said. "My father—or, rather, my grandfather—brought me here when I was young, so I don't really know my mother. I've heard stories, though." A flash of something, there and gone, too fast for Tali to identify. "What was she like, out of interest? I've never been told anything about her."

Tali stepped back against the nearest shop front, extricating herself from the violent current of people around them. Renna moved to her side, leaning against the wall in a manner meant to be casual, though Tali read anticipation in the way she held herself.

What could she say? She could hardly tell the girl about Katja's shattered mind, the way she dreamed of killing Renna's grandfather, the callous way she enslaved entire cities.

"She didn't mistreat me," Tali admitted at length. "She seemed lonely."

Renna watched her for a long moment, saying nothing. Though there was nothing of Katja's madness in her eyes, something else glimmered. An intensity that marked her as the woman's daughter, or perhaps a flash of hurt she tried to hide behind a confident front. Whatever it was, Tali looked away, suddenly uncomfortable with their closeness.

"Father told me the Jalin and Keizerin questioned her. She's probably dead by now." Renna's voice was deadpan, as if trying to convince them both she didn't care. She flattened her back against the wall and faced the crowds, her face twisted into a frown. Tali quelled the urge to offer comfort.

"I don't care," Renna insisted. "Not about her specifically, but it just hurts to not have a mother. All the other students at Ren Câdern are from noble families with living parents, and there I am with neither. I know they look at me and laugh behind my back." Her arms snapped across her chest, giving her a bearing of almost military sternness. "Even my father—grandfather, whatever—is away most of the time running errands for the Jalin. That might be why I make friends with thieves and other reprobates. Never knew my real father, so there's that as well. A nice little complicated home life I've got, wouldn't you say?"

Tali snorted. "I understand completely."

The other girl shot her an outraged look, and for a moment Tali remembered her conversation with the girl's mother, when they'd both spoken of how broken their families were. They'd found a twisted kind of kinship in it. Maybe the same could be true of the daughter?

"My family's all gone as well. Dead, or abandoned me," she began. The fierceness of Renna's scrutiny made her elaborate. "My mother was murdered when I was a toddler." She raised her hands to her horns. "My half-breed status means my father can't acknowledge me, so he left me on his remote home island for most of my childhood. And my uncle's just left me here this morning."

In response, Renna threw her head back and bellowed a laugh, loud and genuine and somewhat bitter. "I'd say that makes us best friends, wouldn't you?" she asked. "We can be part of an exclusive little club. I'll design the emblem, you make the uniform. Only those who've been fucked over by their family can join."

To show she wasn't mocking, Renna again extended her hand. When Tali took it this time, the other girl clasped her forearm and pulled her close, then slapped her back with her other hand.

"It's about time the College had another interesting student," Renna said. "I was getting bored of being the only one there without a stick up my arse and my family's titles stuffed down my throat." Her eyes skewed towards the intruding mass of the Kronhus rising above the rest of the city. "You should probably get back, before you're missed."

"And you?" Tali asked.

Renna shrugged. "I won't be missed. Don't worry about me, though. I know this city too well to get cornered and robbed."

Sheepish at her own blunder, Tali ducked her head. "I won't be doing that again."

"I don't imagine you will," Renna replied. "Even so, I'll keep an eye on you."

Before she could ask Renna how she intended to do that, the other girl pushed away from the shop front and melted into the crowd, disappearing as surely as if she'd been a spectre.

―

The monster haunting her sleeping hours hadn't plagued her since before she'd escaped Katja Westervelt's clutches. For a while, she'd allowed herself to believe she was free of it, its tumorous presence in her mind excised forever. Maybe she'd been too distracted to sleep deeply enough for Erun to materialise, or maybe finally entering the sanctuary provided by the Drasken Empire was enough to keep it at bay. But now it reappeared, shrouding her dreams in blackness as soon as she closed her eyes and anchoring her to the mental Abyss with it.

"You are finally where everyone else wished you to be, and yet nothing has changed for you." Erun's aura this evening shone brighter, casting a dull illumination in the total blackness around them both. "Need I remind you of the offer I made you?"

To Tali's eyes, Erun was larger, broader, more significant. Though still androgynous and mostly human, Tali spied traces of its more monstrous reality behind the brittle veneer. She remembered their very first encounter, when she'd worldstrode to Shaeviren, and how she'd been unable to see Erun as anything but a malevolent presence, huge and unfathomable. Was her familiarity with it lending it strength in her mind?

"I'm still not interested," she replied.

Erun wished to make her whole, a concept she didn't yet understand. Her father had spent months under the ministrations of this monster, being tortured to oblivion by it, and Erun had considered that state approaching wholeness. That it made its intent to do the same to her so clear was unsettling, but it hadn't yet forced her into anything and seemed to want her agreement first.

"When your new masters discover the truth of your heritage, they will use you. You will become nothing more than a sharpened blade in an already fully stocked armoury, your talent wasted by those who cannot look beyond the destruction you can create." Erun cocked its head, eyes wide with uncharacteristic innocence. "What I offer is the opportunity to be free of masters altogether. With the wholeness I award you, you would never be beholden to anyone else. You certainly would not have to submit to the mentorship of your elders."

"I know what you want to do to me."

"Do you?" Erun's mouth split in a predatory smile. "You know only what I did to your progenitor, and that was a failed experiment. I would succeed with you, and you would be far more. You would be whole where your progenitor is broken. Whole where all others are hollow."

Not for the first time, she regretted not sharing Erun's presence with anyone else. It was a burden she bore alone, where someone more learned in the ways of magic might've been able to extract Erun, had she only been brave enough to speak. But she'd found she couldn't. As malicious as Erun was, it had stayed with her where all others had abandoned her. Her mother, dead. Her father, as absent as it was possible to be. Even Heller, who'd journeyed across the Karhes in search of her, had left her in a foreign city as soon as he was sure his obligations to her were fulfilled.

But not Erun.

"Let me show you," the monster said, voice hushed.

It swept a hand across its face, and its sexless features dissolved into mist. From the mist a new face bloomed into existence, more human than Erun's expression, and yet less so at the same time. Heavy brows, a thinned mouth always turned down in anger or severity, skin a pale, sickly grey. And, jutting from above the temples, two stunted horns.

Her own face, staring back at her clearer than any reflection. But not her own face, because the eyes were black and depthless, and the veins of her cheeks and neck were threaded with darkness. She stepped back from herself even as the Erun-Tali monstrosity stepped back in imitation. When she raised her hands to push the creature away, Erun-Tali copied, the moment of contact punctuated by an inhuman scream, loud and high and shrill with pain and desperation.

The Abyss decayed around them, a wash of dead energy emanating from where their palms touched. She smelt old rot on a breeze that didn't exist, tasted the ashes of places she'd never seen on her tongue, felt the blood of people she'd never killed slicking her skin.

A barrage of images, brief as heartbeats, assaulted her vision. First Sinnis, as it would have been had she and the Novhar she'd fought pulled it down completely and wiped it from the world. Then a field of corpses dissolving in the aftermath of a battle she knew she was responsible for, their flesh and blood and bones rendered down to particles, until nothing remained of thousands of vibrant lives cut bloodily short. Finally, herself standing atop a heap of sun-bleached skulls, the world beneath her barren and lifeless, a desert of grey dirt and bland rock encompassing the universe.

"How could anyone challenge one as powerful as you, when you allow yourself to be whole?"

Erun's voice stole into her thoughts and banished the images. She pulled her hands to her chest and found the monster again standing in front of her, the black-eyed version of herself dispelled.

"Return to Shaeviren and I will give you the power to end worlds."

The monster took a confident step towards her, one taloned hand reaching out. In her panic she lashed out, throwing herself bodily at the beast. She didn't fall right through, nor did it turn its dark magic on her, as she might've expected. Instead, Erun seemed to swallow her, and in the deep recesses of it, she felt a short, sharp sensation of the power it'd shown her capable of, if only she'd submit.

The power to end worlds.

For a moment, but no more, she was almost seduced by Erun's offer.

But then Erun catapulted her into the waking world amidst her own whimpers of fear. It was only when she ripped her body from the suffocating press of her blanket and hauled in a huge breath that she realised what she'd been about to do, what she'd been about to agree to.