Zachary Jernigan: No Return

In Vedas’s twelfth year, Knos Min raised the tariffs on Hlumi tobacco products. Relations between the countries took a sudden downturn, and the eastern nation began expelling Knosi nobles and political figures from its borders. Vedas’s parents, on a brief sabbatical on the northern coast, were forced to leave without their adolescent son. For a brief time, Vedas lived in the homes of various friends, and then he lived on the street.

Word reached him of his parents’ death in the Month of Royalty, 12478, almost a year after their departure. By this time, he had become messenger and errand boy to Saatreth, the abbey master of the Seventh Order of Black Suits.

Messenger, errand boy, and plaything.

The Seventh had successfully kept their history of pederasty a secret from the city’s other twenty orders for over three centuries. Upon discovery of their transgression in the spring of the following year, Abse volunteered the Thirteenth to right the wrong. They removed the recruits, killed the men who had once been their faith-kin, and left the abbey a charred pile of rubble.

“I can send you back to Knos Min,” Abse told Vedas. “There are a few other boys orphaned by the debacle between our two countries. But that trouble has long since abated, and the recent succession of the dictator in Nos Ulom has resulted in an oddly peaceable country. Your passage across the continent would most likely be safe.”

Vedas parsed the master’s language. “My parents are dead.”

“Yes. I have heard.” Abse offered the somber, black-skinned boy a stiff smile. “Surely you have relatives?”

“Yes,” Vedas answered. Of course he did, two uncles and an aunt, but he had no interest in leaving Dareth Hlum. He only half understood why the abbey of the Seventh had been destroyed. True, Saatreth had not been a father or a friend. He had hurt Vedas badly enough to leave scars for years to come. Nonetheless, it was the abbey that had provided shelter and given Vedas an identity.

“Relatives are often a great comfort in times of change,” Abse continued. “On the other hand, I have heard that you are a talented young man.” He held up a finger. “I am not obfuscating my meaning. No one in this order desires the services Saatreth desired. By talented, I mean only that word has reached me of your martial prowess.”

Vedas interpreted again. Fighting . Here was an area in which he excelled.

“I want to keep fighting,” he told Abse. An awful thought occurred to him. “I killed a boy during practice. Is this why you’re making me go home? I didn’t mean to do it.”

Abse pursed his lips. “I am not making you go home, boy. If you choose to stay in the order, you will undoubtedly kill someone again. Sectarian battle is dangerous. That is why it is so tightly regulated in Knos Min.” He paused, pale eyes fixed on Vedas, before speaking again. “If you want to continue fighting, you must stay here. You will be an acolyte for two years. If you pass martial training and your doctrine classes—no easy feat, I assure you—at that point you will be offered a suit. Understand, it is no small matter to be given such an opportunity. Suits are prohibitively costly to produce—more so every year. Most are acquired through the deaths of our brothers and sisters.”

Vedas stared at the man whom he would come to know as master. The odd, fine-boned face that appeared only a few years older than Vedas’s own. The small frame sheathed in black. The light in the room changed as clouds moved outside, revealing the barely noticeable designs on the man’s suit. Vedas regarded the abbey master’s face again, and for a moment it seemed that fractures formed upon it. A mapwork of fine lines. Paper crumpled and ironed out.

“Is this what you want?” Abse asked. “To stay here?”

Vedas agreed without a moment’s hesitation.

‡

The Black Suits entered the square first. Twenty men and women, clothed head to foot in seamless black. Some had formed relief designs on the surface of their skin-tight suits. Others had thickened the malleable elder-cloth in strategic areas, creating body armor and helmets. A few had formed bonehard striking surfaces along the forearm or shin, spikes at knee and elbow. A lone brother had grown his suit’s horns into vicious prongs.

Few chose, like Vedas, to retain the smooth, unadorned texture of the cloth, and fewer still masked their features completely.

All skin tones were represented, for Vedas’s order culled recruits from each of Golna’s major ethnic neighborhoods. Diversity is a strength , Abse claimed, and so allowed the brothers and sisters a great deal of freedom. Plaited and matted hair grew from faces and sprouted from helmets. Tattoos curled around eyes. Plugs of bone pierced lips and brows.

The men and women of the Thirteenth Order of Black Suits had little in common beyond the color of their suits, the hardness of their bodies, and the horns on their hooded heads. They had become brothers and sisters through physical pain. They prayed and fought for the downfall of Adrash together, proudly displaying the color of opposition.

More than half their number preferred weapons other than the lo. These dropped their staffs upon entering the square and lifted hammers from their shoulders, unsheathed swords, twirled flails, and readied razored shields. The four who had formed weapons out of their suit material eschewed handheld weapons altogether.

The Black Suits stopped in the center of the square, eyes locked on something Vedas could not yet see. Abse, a thin, diminutive figure holding two broadswords half as long as his body, took a step forward from the group and stamped his foot, as if anchoring himself to the spot.

A howl sounded, a ragged-edged bellow that offended Vedas’s ears and caused the recruits to mill uneasily at his back. He recognized the sound and cursed inwardly.

A second after announcing itself, the hellhound catapulted into the square, skidding a mere body length from Abse’s feet. A crest of purple fur bristled along its broad back. Smoke rose from its drooling mouth. It stood at the shoulder taller than the abbey master.

Abse neither flinched nor gave ground. Bringing a hellhound was a serious and dangerous breach of etiquette, only technically allowed because Vedas’s order had been allowed to choose the location. The abbey master would not allow this as a distraction. His eyes never left the advancing line of White Suits that followed the dog.

The Thirteenth had never fought this order, the so-called Soldiers of the Appropriate Desire, but Vedas had done his research. He had briefed every brother and sister of the Thirteenth, assuring their preparedness as best he could. Superficially, the Soldiers were a similarly outfitted, non-mage order, legally registered within the city. They had not gone south of the law for three years. Abse and Vedas had predicted a clean battle.

The hellhound said otherwise—as did the two white-suited women at point, the tops of whose staffs glowed with green magefire.

Their numbers, at least, were correct. Including the hellhound, Vedas counted twenty Soldiers, accoutered in a similar if more conservative manner than his own brothers and sisters. They had only gathered eleven new recruits, he noted in relief, and had not encouraged the children to wait in hiding before the attack. They followed at the order’s back, peering through the mass of white-suited figures, trying to locate their rivals and failing.

Small blessings were never discouraged.

Best not to waste it , Vedas reasoned. A small risk might be taken to assure his recruits.

He spoke softly to them without turning his head.

“You heard it. They’ve brought a hellhound. Doubtless some of you’ve seen them at the carnival. They are dangerous, yes, but this one can’t touch you. The White Suits don’t have the authority to allow that.”