Mortal

He ran his finger along the razor edge. It was a beautiful weapon. “Have you ever seen a knife like this?”

“I’ve seen too many blades to count. But never one like this.”

Rom studied the Corpse. It glared back with coal-dark eyes, unflinching. Armor covered his torso, thighs, and arms with overlapping flaps that allowed for movement. Black leather, a quarter-inch thick, crafted to stop a blade. His boots rose to his knees, steel tipped with soles an inch thick. His hair was long and course, twisted in dreadlocks; his jaw was obviously swollen, but otherwise his features were quite refined despite his size. This was no mere thug.

Mortals had encountered elite guard before-splinter groups whose roots they’d never been able to properly trace to a single source. They’d known that forces would rise against them to challenge Jonathan’s sovereignty. But while the warrior before them was obviously battle trained and as fine a specimen of power and strength as any Rom had seen, Roland had only encountered five of them. Where were the rest?

And then there was the question of what the warrior was. The strange scent the man emitted brought a slight shudder to Rom’s nerves.

“What do you make of it?” Rom asked, glancing at Roland.

They all knew what he was talking about.

“I can’t be sure.”

“It’s emotion,” Triphon said.

“Impossible,” one of the ranking Nomads, named Seriph, said. “If he were Mortal, we wouldn’t be able to smell him.”

“He may not be Mortal, but he doesn’t smell like any Corpse I’ve met,” Triphon said. “How can he be Corpse with that scent?”

“He’s either Corpse or Mortal. There’s nothing between.”

“We know what Corpses smell like. We don’t know what Mortals smell like.”

“You’re suggesting that we smell like that? Death and these other odors mixed into that… nasty bouquet?”

“I’m saying we don’t know.”

Rom lifted his hand. “Enough.” He turned to Roland. “What’s your best guess, Roland?”

“Ask the alchemist. This is a wizard’s doing.”

Roland had never been keen on alchemy, preferring instead nature’s way of distilling purity through the generations. Nomads, once homogenous by necessity, considered themselves especially pure-blooded now that they were bound by Jonathan’s blood. This in contrast to the Keepers, who were all of varied descent except for the one thing they had in common: that they were changed from Corpse to Mortal by the same blood.

“I’m asking you,” Rom pressed. “You saw them, fought them, killed them. You have the sharpest instincts here.”

Roland turned an icy gaze on the prisoner and said in a low tone: “This is what I know. He is an enemy who took one of my men. His stench of death is far deeper than any Corpse. If this new scent is life, then it’s the work of an alchemist wizard. The real question is how many of them exist and under what authority.”

Rom nodded. “What do you say, Book?”

The ancient Keeper turned his eyes from the prisoner to Roland. He dipped his head. “I would say you are right. Roland has good instincts.”

The man had grown quite stoic this past year as Jonathan approached his maturity, keeping mostly to the task of monitoring the steady change in the boy’s blood and advising the council like a father of few words. All that mattered to him was that Jonathan fulfill the promise of the Keepers who came before him. That his blood change the world. It was the boy’s destiny, and seeing it fulfilled was his.

Rom shared the old Keeper’s resolve to the end.

He nodded at Roland. “Remove his gag.”

The Nomad stepped behind the prisoner, slid the knotted cloth up, and jerked the gag free.

The Corpse spat blood onto the ground, not in apparent disgust so much as to clear his mouth. A tooth skittered across the dusty stone, landing near Triphon’s foot.

His friend glanced at Rom, then bent and picked it up. Sniffed it. Flipped it back toward the prisoner with a flick of his thumb.

“Vanilla,” he said.

“Vanilla?”

Triphon shrugged. “That’s what it smells like to me. Vanilla pudding. There’s plenty of death mixed in there, but I’m thinking vanilla.”

Rom suppressed the slight turn of a smile. Triphon, the man of bold words and no guile, loved by all. Except maybe Michael.

“It’s from a vanilla plug,” the prisoner said.

His words robbed the room of sound. It was amazing the man could speak so well past his swollen jaw- obviously broken. Rom wasn’t sure how to follow such a statement. Vanilla plugs were common in these parts, chewed to clean teeth and freshen stale breath. But to hear a Corpse with dark eyes who carried a knife the length of Rom’s forearm make this his first confession struck him as strange.

“What’s your name?” he said.

The prisoner stared without answering.

Mortals could be quite persuasive and seductive, a trait that had grown with their abilities to perceive others in unique ways. Seduction began with understanding the needs, fears, and longings of another. Jonathan’s blood had afforded them heightened perception of all of these.

New scents drifted off the prisoner, mitigated by one far more familiar: fear. Respect motivated by fear. Honor, bound to that same fear. The prisoner was obviously loyal. Breaking him would be difficult.

“You’re in a tough position,” Rom said gently. “I recognize that there are many things you’re not free to tell me. But some things you are, and I would know them. You should know that we have no intention of torturing you because we already know you won’t break.”

Immediately the thin scent of fear began to ebb. The stench of death did not.

“We know you are dead. Do you know that, my friend?”

The man swallowed once, opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it, and then did speak.

“Corpses are dead,” he said. “I am not a Corpse.”

Rom paused. “Are you saying you’re Mortal? Because you smell like death.”

“I’m not Mortal. And I’m not a Corpse.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m human, made by my master. Alive.”

“Really. And who is your master?”

“Saric.”

The name hung in the air.

“Saric’s dead,” Triphon said, his voice hard.

“Saric… is alive,” the Corpse said. “A Dark Blood. My maker. Fully alive, as I am fully alive.”

Cold prickled along Rom’s arms. Impossible. He glanced at the old Keeper, whose eyes had widened in shock.

He rounded on the Corpse. “Saric made you? No. You mean he changed you with his alchemy.”

“Wizards,” Roland muttered.

“Saric gave me life, as he has given all Dark Bloods life.”

“Dark Bloods.”

“Those made in his image, resurrected from death to know full life.”

“Sacrilege!” Zara, one of the Nomadic elders, cried. “Only Jonathan can give life.”

Even Mortals who brought Corpses to life with the blood from their veins-a discovery of the last six months- could do so only because their own blood came from Jonathan. Unless Saric had taken Jonathan’s blood… But that wasn’t possible. This was a different kind of life entirely.

“How many has Saric given ‘life’ to?” Rom said carefully.

The Dark Blood nodded once, eyes steady. “Three thousand.”