Within an hour, we were done. The bright camaraderie of the dining hall was gone, but in its place was something solid and determined, the seven of us united in our resolve to take back Hyng’ohr.
“Go rest,” Ganyir said. “Tomorrow, we march to war.”
I said goodnight to my friends and turned to look for Mahrai. She was disappearing through a small doorway in the back of the room. I followed and found myself in a narrow spiral staircase.
I walked up the stairs that wound around and around for several floors. Although doorways opened off into other spaces, including corridors lined with bedrooms, the sound of Mahrai’s footsteps told me that she was heading still further up. By the time those footsteps stopped, I was near the zenith of the fortress’ tallest tower.
I emerged from the top of the stairwell into a round room. In the center, a telescope on an elaborate platform pointed up at a domed ceiling made of panels that could be slid aside with a system of pulleys. To one side was a desk holding a pile of dusty papers. Next to that, books, scrolls, and scraps of paper littered a set of shelves. At the far side of the room, beside the doorway to a balcony, was a long, wide couch, piled with blankets and cushions. Whoever had once spent their hours studying the stars here, it seemed that they hadn’t been good at making the time to get away and sleep in a proper bed.
The door swung shut behind me with a thud. I walked around the telescope to the doorway and found Mahrai on the balcony, a smaller telescope in her hands, staring not at the heavens but at Hyng’ohr City. I wondered for a moment how she’d known where to find this place, but then this was a previously enemy-occupied fortress, so she’d probably been here dozens of times before.
“Look,” she said as she handed me the telescope. “You can see where you destroyed my golem. The lava is still glowing in the square.”
She wrapped her hands around mine and guided me until the telescope was pointing in the right direction. She was absolutely right; the courtyard was still alight with the energy from our confrontation, glowing blobs scattered amid dark stone. Beyond a patch of dried earth that might once have been grass, I saw a grand building looking out across the square. Servants and soldiers were running in and out of its wide iron gates.
“What is that building?” I asked.
“That’s the palace,” Mahrai replied. “It’s where Saruqin and his lieutenants are based. If we’re going to take them out, then that’s our target.”
Her voice wavered, and I felt the trembling of her hand as I gave her back the telescope.
“Are you doing okay?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Not having second thoughts about changing sides?”
“Absolutely not. Those people used me to hurt others. Now, I’m going to make them hurt.”
She leaned into the room and tossed the telescope down on the sofa, then turned to face me again.
“Go ahead and ask,” she said. “I know you want to.”
“All right. How did you end up working with those guys in the first place?”
“It’s a long story. Starts back when I was just a kid. My family was killed in Emperor Talekon’s wars—mother, father, both my older brothers. I was left all alone. For the first few years, I roamed from place to place as a beggar, often looking for attention from the guilds. I had some Augmenting talent, but without attention and someone to nurture it, it never grew. I didn’t have what it took to get into a guild properly, and there was no one else to take me in.”
She wrapped her arms around herself as if cold, though a warm wind was blowing. I reached for her, but she stepped back off the balcony and into the observatory, where she began pacing slowly around the grand telescope.
“While I wandered, I heard things about those who had served the Emperor and where their paths had taken them. In particular, I heard that some of his top generals had followed the Path of Peace after the war. Ironic, right? Their violence had left my family dead, and now, they got to step away and leave the blood behind. It was clear that there was no justice in the world, just what we could take. I didn’t want to see the world like that, but what other choice did I have?”
I laid a hand on her shoulder. “That sounds rough.”
She reached up to squeeze that hand, then turned toward me. She didn’t look me in the eye but instead stared straight ahead at my chest. Her hand ran down the front of my robe, across silk dusty from travel and combat.
“Eventually, I met members of the Cult of Unswerving Shadows,” she continued. “Given our shared disgust at the Path of Peace, it was easy enough for them to recruit me and to set me on the Straight Path. There were parts of it that never sat well with me, but it opposed the Path of Peace, and in my youthful fury, that was all that mattered. With their help, I tapped into my Augmenting talents and discovered that I had more power than anyone had ever guessed. I learned the Summon Golem technique and found that by using it, I could make others fear me, just as I had always lived in fear. Now, the world would be mine.
“I became the cult’s enforcer. They tolerated just enough of my dissent to keep me on their side. I learned to obey and to accept, because they were the people who had accepted me, and because they offered my best chance to avenge my losses.”
“You have other people who accept you now.” I tilted her chin up so that she looked me in the eye. “You know that, right?”
“My
