Renegade ch 2: Never Fail

Anku Phy couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

As he exited a small jewel shop, he drew a shaky breath. A blend of city aromas filled his nostrils—bakeries, chandlers, and artisans competed with the perfume of the terraced terrain’s flowering vineyards. A sign read Rebalo Street. Another beneath it touted this as The Walking Sector of Azmet District. No vehicles allowed.

Don’t get cocky yet. That was nothing, not even a warm-up compared to what you’ve planned, Most Infamous Conman Extraordinaire.

Phy’s heart raced. Death was the penalty for most crimes in the Napix Empire, some deaths worse than others. No one contested his claim to the title ‘Most Infamous’ because dead men made silent rivals.

Still, he couldn’t stop a smile from blossoming within his faux goatee. As the daystar dipped behind the southeastern mountains, limning their peaks in silver, the final rays of evening set the windows in this affluent valley alight. Phy squinted, stance puffed and stride lengthened.

His wide belt scrunched beneath his ribs, and he adjusted it. Everything was clean here. Curves and smooth surfaces defined the cityscape. If Phy wanted them to believe he was a nobleman as his attire implied, he had to fit that image.

Shopfronts on either side offered his reflection from multiple angles. The swirled motif of the empire’s wealthiest clan bordered the hem of his ankle-length vest. His tilted beret boasted an expensive granok feather, though it had faded from proper inky black, stringy and lank. Other pedestrians gave him a wide berth, many opting to walk on the other side of the stunted trees that lined the middle of the brick path.

With a glance at the bandage on his right thumb, Phy recalled a tray with a dozen clear gems glistening like faceted glass in folds of soft, obsidian fabric. “Perfectly cut symarr,” the shopkeeper had bragged, “sliced from the hearts of dead stars.”

A wave of air evoked a startled blink as a young man landed in front of him. Horror kneaded Phy’s gut. The youth’s short, ashen curls weren’t uncommon in this territory. Nor were his middle gray skin or how his features seemed blended as if the artist forgot a face should have shadows. The eyes, though, immediately identified him.

“Good day, Nobleman. Where are you headed?”

Stepping around him, Phy kept walking. “To sell my investment and make a profit. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Not unless your product was obtained illegally.”

Phy let out the most innocent laugh he could manage as his hands slid into his belled sleeves to fondle a small knife. The youth kept step alongside him. Recalling his great uncle’s advice to observe every detail in case he had to copy it someday, Phy raked him with a sideways glance.

Dark pants tucked into darker boots. Paler straps laced the inseam-half of the footwear. That pattern repeated under the right arm of his high-collared jacket. Within a pocket beneath a square sheath on his hip, something wiggled.

As they passed beneath a shop’s awning, the iridescent chrysolite in the youth’s eyes appeared to glow. He focused on Phy’s bandage. “How did you hurt yourself?”

Phy replied a wary, “What do you mean?”

“I’m sure your hand is bandaged for some reason. Did you, say, squeeze a gem harder than necessary, then deride the shopkeeper’s work because it cut you?”

Phy hastened, and his pinky toes screamed that these pointed shoes were not designed for this. “I’m in a hurry.”

“But I’m not through talking to you yet, Anku Phy.”

Everything stopped—breath, heart, feet—and Great Uncle’s words rang louder than ever before. If you get caught by an Aylata, you might as well bid the world bye-bye.

Less than an arm’s length from Phy stood an Aylata, a hybrid of the Napix and Magni races. Phy himself was Napix. Full Magni were extinct. This halfling’s stance bespoke an ease of movement Phy envied.

And Phy knew this one’s name. Everyone did.

Trying to sound unconcerned, Phy mumbled, “What do you want, Ravi Xlack Ekymé?”

“The symarr you took from the shop.”

Phy’s legs heeded the command to run. He couldn’t fight an Aylata, especially not an elite one like a Ravi, but he was a skilled hider.

He wasn’t fast enough. A hand locked around his wrist, and his knife escaped his sleeve of its own accord. Reflecting the deep shades of sunset, it hovered level with his nose.

It showed him his own beady eyes growing rounder. His voice had no breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have nothing.”

The Aylata’s grip tightened. “If you have nothing, what were you going to sell?”

As numbness crept across his captured arm, Phy sunk to his knees on the rough, gray bricks. The knife dissolved, dust floating away on gentle wind.

“Please…” A crowd gathered—his marks, his audience, made to look multitudinous by all the reflective windows. “Citizens, I have been falsely accused!”

Ekymé frowned. “Unwrap the bandage around your thumb, then.”

Phy shook his head as he tried to concoct a plausible excuse. Even the daystar stared at him, peering over the row of terraced structures lined along this pedestrian path. Azmet was built of glass and jewels—too dazzling.

The Aylata’s smooth timbre wrenched back his attention. “I’ll give you one more chance to cooperate. Show us all what’s hiding in your bandage.”

Phy’s gaze dropped to the sheath at the Aylata’s belt. The Ier resting within was an inanimate tool, a weapon, an impossibly flat square while it slept. Yet, it dared him to keep up his defiance.

He gulped.

Slowly, he uncoiled the bandage, careful to conceal the stolen gem between his fingers.

Ekymé picked the tiny rock out of Phy’s hand anyway and passed it to a hunchbacked drone recording everything. “Return this to the jewel shop on Rebalo Street.”

With a series of clicks, the mechett scurried off the way Phy had come.

Released, his palms dropped to the ground. His stomach burned. How could this have gone so wrong?

That sliver of rock was nothing. Let them have it. He had bigger things to tackle.

Phy scrambled to his feet, but the crowd packed too thick, whispering and staring.

“Get out of the way!”

No one complied.

Ekymé tossed his Ier in the air, and the square plate snapped open with an electric hiss. Twisted strands channeled light into the shape of a thick, loosely-woven staff.

Catching the Ierat its middle, Ekymé twirled it like an athlete warming up. “Tell me, why should a man who repeatedly breaks the law out of greed be allowed to live?”

“I have a family,” Phy whimpered, “with little kids. And pets!”

“Really? Do any of these little kids have names?”

“Um…uh…my son…my kid’s called Rebalo.”

Ekymé’s face softened in mocking pity. “Did you name your kid after the street or the animal?”

“It was my wife’s idea.”

“Is she also named after a pest?”

The crowd laughed. Rebalo were vermin hated or feared by everyone of proper birth as symbols of filth and danger.

“Do you think I’m stupid, Mr. Phy?” Ekymé swung the tendrilled staff, boredom scrawled in his every line. How old was he anyway? Just a year over two decades, Phy recalled. Young Aylata were notorious for overzealously enforcing the law.

Phy shook his head and backed away from the weapon’s long swipes.

Ekymé nodded. “Good. I don’t think you’re truly stupid either. You know what happens next.”

Anku Phy got to his knees, gaze on the ground. “I’m sorry. I took the symarr from the shop. Now I appeal to the Mercy of the Judges.”

The Aylata stepped closer, Ier held behind his back. “Step one: Admittance. You’ll have your day in court, but let’s make one thing clear. Today you lost your merchandise and some dignity, but if you steal in my district again, you’ll lose a lot more.”

* * *

“Fear of loss can drive one to madness.”

Sarqii repeated the phrase in an undertone as he stood behind his room’s dressing screen within the Emperor’s Palace. He was supposed to be the symbol of strength and serenity now, but he felt like a small boy playing in his father’s flowing garb and oversized shoes, dreaming and completely unprepared.

While Sarqii was tall, he was not the giant his father had been, so a servant sat by his feet and hemmed the emperor’s traditional feather-like robe.

They would see right through him. He couldn’t be his father.

Even his reflection’s hollow stare judged him. His father’s gaze had been wide and bright, saturated with wisdom and compassion. Sarqii’s clear, dark eyes were narrow and slanted, and he could never tell what they held.

“Would anyone find it too odd if I combed my hair over my face and let them pretend I am someone else?”

“That would be ridiculous,” his valet insisted as he swept Sarqii’s curtain of hair into a half-bun and secured it with woven wire. “Your coif must be exactly like your father’s.”

His hair was exactly like his father’s, darker than night and thick enough to damage most things meant to cut it.

With his left hand—his dominant hand despite how askance people regarded that—Sarqii tugged on a lock until at least some of his bangs hung in his face.

The valet gave him an exasperated look but left it, already reapplying the filigree to Sarqii’s sleeves.

“Change is inevitable.” Another mumbled quote of something sung to him in a dozen languages by a mother he barely remembered. Her eyes had been like his, though hers had contained a universe of secrets.

“Just please don’t talk to yourself at the inauguration,” the valet advised. His hands clapped Sarqii’s robed shoulders with a muffled thump. “You are the son of Emperor Gera Kys, the man with an infallible memory and the compassion of a dozen grandmothers. Everyone loved him. They love you, too.”

“They loved my brother, not me.”

“They will love you. There’s something about your family that’s indescribable but irresistible. The loss of your brother—”

Sarqii shut him out, but the memory had already triggered, and when he tried to shove it aside, it transformed into the nightmare of last night.

When you meet the Ravida, he will take your life.

It still made no sense. Sarqii didn’t know Ravida Vuet K’alaqk well, but his father had. These two leaders of the Napix Empire possessed deep trust in one another. Having seen it firsthand, Sarqii couldn’t imagine it being a façade.

It was a trap, he decided. The intruder must have been with some small, dissident faction. They didn’t want him to trust the Ravida because his paranoia would weaken the empire.

He took a deep breath.

I am the empire now.

As he stepped through the doors of the palace’s grand hall, bile stung Sarqii’s throat, and he fought to keep his steps steady.

I am the empire, he repeated as he tried to smooth out his face. This was his father’s Honoring, and Sarqii’s inauguration would come at the end of it. He couldn’t look sick.

“We live in the shadows of great pawns and kings.”

He whirled. Aristocrats and wait staff surrounded him, none close enough to have so intimately whispered the line in his ear. He frowned, fingers rubbing the end of his loose bangs.

“Is it proper for the emperor-to-be to look so anxious?”

“I’m not—”

He turned, and again no one was there. Or rather, several stood, too distant to have been the speaker but near enough to have heard him and put on questioning looks. Sarqii’s mouth hung ajar.

“It would be unseemly if they saw you drool.”

Sarqii resisted the urge to pivot toward the whisper this time and was rewarded with the faintest flicker in his peripherals. That could have been anything. Light sinking through the pool above the transparent ceiling glinted off jewelry and glasses and cast undulating shadows in this crowded antechamber.

“Are…are you invisible?” he questioned and remembered to swallow before he really did drool. “Or am I simply insane?”

Only the low, blended sound of the throng answered him.

Lips pursed, Sarqii allowed his gaze to roam. Refreshments waltzed around the room via trays carried on waiters’ shoulders. The scents of strong alcohol and delicate meats wafted through a miasma of perfumes. No chairs awaited the crowd’s desire to sit, traded for fur-lined mats in swirling rows for kneeling around the space’s center.

There, a throne—a heavy, ornate, and rigid thing—hovered above scenes etched in glass. Simple, white lines drew the story of this ancient empire’s second emperor, the founder of the Kys dynasty.

On the wall beyond it, massive double doors parted. A murmur rushed through the assembly as finally Ravida Vuet K’alaqk entered the room.

The highest-ranking Aylata was short compared to Sarqii. Though combed back, his hematite hair refused to lie flat, crowning him with stubborn, slanted pikes facing behind. A thin beard bordered his jaw, something never seen on purely Napix men. It reinforced the alien authority infused in his every line.

Through the crowd, Sarqii met the Ravida’s gaze. There was the green-gold chrysolite he recognized, flickering and pale over gray irises. Focusing on the color was like trying to map a kaleidoscope or staring into an opal’s depths, ever-changing, forming scenes that could not be.

Sarqii’s breath caught in his throat, and his father’s less-favored wife screamed.

Less favored by Father, not the noblemen. He only married her because of their insistence, and to spite them, he left her childless.

How he wished she was his mother, though, instead of the blurred figure in his memory. This woman was proper in every sense of the word. Why would she break that decorum and disgrace this solemn occasion with a scream?

As all turned to the widowed empress, a mixed reaction impelled those nearest her. Some scrambled back. Others rushed forward to examine the limp boy she cradled.

Chyr, Sarqii’s younger brother.

At fourteen, he had already caught up to Sarqii in height, and the former empress could not hold him, collapsing to the floor’s glass mosaic. Dark, glossy blood dripped from Chyr’s nostrils and the corner of one eye to stain her white gown.

Ever since his older brother’s demise last year, doctors had shadowed both remaining princes every waking hour. The one now at Chyr’s side shook his head.

Sarqii exhaled what he thought would be his last breath, a horrified moan escaping him. Anger and fear entwined and possessed his hands with tremors. He looked back at the Ravida. The man stared at him. Sad determination filled his kaleidoscope eyes.

I cannot confront the Ravida, Sarqii recalled the stranger’s words.

Well, I can, he thought. I will!

He took a heavy step forward. His shoulder bumped one of the guests and called his gaze for the briefest of glances, but there was no time to apologize. The Aylata’s words rang in his mind.

As his eyes returned to the Ravida, a wave of nausea overtook Sarqii, sight all but abandoning him. Yet, he could do this. He was the son of Emperor Gera Kys.

Forcing himself to straighten in a manner befitting his position, he stepped again. The room spun, and his head hurt like it would implode. He raised his left hand. A demand for acknowledgement rose to his lips, but he got no further.

Sarqii tripped, falling first on one knee, then on his side. A moment later, he realized he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t recall how to perform that rote and automatic task. His head hit the ground, eyes half-closed, and he couldn’t remember how to move them.

The crowd around him yelled and shook him and shuffled away. The last thing he saw was his step-mother’s face streaked with tears as she pulled him into her arms alongside his brother.

The last thing he ever heard was a Mind Aylata’s whisper, the kind only its intended heard. ‘Forgive me.’

* * *

“A spirit of forgiveness is not desirable for Aylata of our station.”

The first lecture from his Protector mentor wafted through Xlack’s mind as he read the new head scribe’s message asking for more details in the case of Anku Phy.

“You monitor everything in the district, mediate disputes, and apprehend criminals. The people feel safe because they know you will be there the moment something goes wrong.”

“But I’m supposed to be a legend,” fourteen-year-old Xlack had excused. “Aren’t legends supposed to do things differently?”

The teacher had rapped his student’s brow with a datapad. “You assume that along with the rest of the empire, but you’re not a legend yet.”

Seven years later, he still wasn’t.

And he was tired of getting hit on the forehead.

One would figure monitoring everything in a district would be interesting. Boredom’s my stalker.

He had hoped the nobleman bearing false credentials would turn out to be something more entertaining than a petty jewel thief. A whiny one, at that. After Anku Phy had been dragged off by capable custodians three days ago, Xlack hadn’t given him a second thought.

Without replying, he swiped aside the head scribe’s message and moved to the next notification blinking in the corner of his datapad’s screen. It promised to be less rote, at least.

Following its summons, he climbed the stairs of Azmet’s tallest tower, each story a smaller block centered atop the one below. As he neared the penthouse, his path spiraled around the building’s perimeter, encased in tinted windows hashed with metal supports. They framed a cloudless sky and a speck sailing over the horizon like a distant star.

Words drifted into his mind, small and stretched to their limit. ‘Good morning, baby boy.’

Not slowing, he caught the Mental string and held it, sending back a whisper of his own. ‘Mom, I’ve asked you not to call me that.’

‘You will always be my baby boy.’ Amusement, sweet laced with bitter like the aroma of rotting fruit, coated her whisper, and Xlack sent back the notion of a sigh.

‘I’m busy.’

‘What has snared your interest when you are so tired?’

Xlack grimaced. Of course she noticed every nuance of his mood. Though she was too far for her Mind Talents to sense his emotions as she would in person, stripping a whisper of all feeling was nearly impossible.

‘That’s what it means to be a Protector—too many things to do and not enough time to sleep.’

It was not the answer she wanted, but she chuckled, soft notes tickling as if tiny feet scurried across the inside of his skin. ‘Your father sends his greetings.’

Xlack loaded his response with doubt. ‘He’s not there with you. Dad’s arrival in Atetu yesterday was all over the dataseas.’

His mother huffed. ‘He calls me, unlike a certain ungrateful son.’

‘Mom, you whisper to me every morning as the station passes over.’ He paused on the stairs, gaze spearing the faux star directly above him. ‘And don’t chide me for never whispering first. No one has the crazy range you do.’

Her laugh fell heavier this time, like swollen raindrops. ‘Let me see your district.’

‘You’ve seen it a year’s worth of times.’ Even so, he touched a window and gestured for its tint to lighten.

Like thin, flowing cloth, a moment wrapped his final word: the feel of sun-kissed glass beneath his fingertips. The city’s mix of smells not quite scrubbed from the processed air. The view of the sprawling valley and crisp mountains clothed in tattered robes of lush vegetation, their crowns bare and dark as midmorning light danced on the forest’s ancient boughs and winked at the meandering river. Pride that he belonged here, watching over all of it.

‘The spectacle has yet to fade. I have told you a thousand times how proud I am of your successes as a Protector. I only wish it did not keep you so far away all the time.’

He barely heard the last line. As Enari Station slipped behind the mountains, their connection pulled through his Mental grasp, too taut to carry a reply.

With a swipe to darken the window, he continued up the stairs, but as he released the string, a final thought fell from it. ‘I have selected a lady of interest for you.’

His heart skipped, mind abuzz with a million questions he couldn’t ask without calling her, and his toes struck the riser. Hopefully, no one saw that.

Rumors were a part of his life. He had learned to ignore most of them, but with this revelation, they flipped through his head like pages at the mercy of the wind. Ammalyn Ekymé searched for a bride for her son. Had he already seen his mother’s choice in those unavoidable tabloids?

What was she like? Gorgeous, knowing his mother’s preferred company.

What if she was horrible, or what if her mom hated him?

He could not marry without his mother’s permission, and the same would be true for his lady of interest. His mother could bully anyone into a yes, but that wasn’t how he wanted this to happen.

His mother was picky, and whomever she selected would be perfect. He would call later.

Shaking his head to clear it, Xlack hopped up the last two steps and placed his palm against his front door. With a muted beep, it rushed aside.

An awkward scent spilled out with the warm, salty fragrance of home.

“When the monitors notified me that a Messenger Koth Vlokem entered my apartment, I hoped he wouldn’t put his feet on the furniture. What are you doing here?”

With a frosted glass of something that smelled like paint thinner, the paunchy, middle-aged Messenger leaned back as far as the chair would allow, feet propped on a counter. “What do you mean, ‘What am I doing here?’ Can’t I have a vacation to visit my friends?”

Xlack looked to his left, where a window-lined seating area hosted none except a wilted flower given to him by a grateful citizen last week. To the right, the kitchen lay similarly unoccupied aside from Vlokem’s misplaced feet.

What a great party.

“I wasn’t aware Mianlan was your friend,” Xlack drawled. “Where is he?”

Vlokem took a swig, ice clinking. Parted on the left and copiously gelled, his soft, dark hair fanned oddly around his broad face, and Xlack wondered that it managed to stay out of the glass.

“That old fuddy-duddy that wouldn’t know fun if it fell in his lap?”

“Yes, that Mianlan. I’m surprised he let you in.”

Vlokem shrugged. “He wasn’t here. There was a note though, made of ice probably out of some symbolism. I used it for my drink.”

Xlack sighed. “Because I obviously didn’t want to read it anyway.”

Peeking from Xlack’s pocket, Rell sniffed at the intruder and sneezed. He snarled, then sniffed again.

Claws curled into Xlack’s pant leg as the beastling ventured to the floor, tail held high. The appendage didn’t fit him, too long and slender. More silver than the rest of him, it protruded from the obsidian spot that splotched his rump and dripped down his hind legs.

Xlack looked at the Messenger askance. Who sent him? The fragrance of Kobolast District still clung to him—curated forests and sparkling lakes. Blending with his tincture of toothpaste and laziness, it permeated the suite.

“Skedaddle, rodent,” Vlokem grumbled, one boot swinging from the table to deter the beastling’s approach.

Rell tumbled backward, squealing. Xlack scooped him up and scanned him for injuries. His thumb straightened the fragile, sleeve-like fins running down Rell’s forepaws. They weren’t ripped or bleeding.

“Vlokem, you’re here for some reason. Tell me or leave.”

“You want drama, huh? How’s this: I bring you a message from the emperor!” Standing, the Messenger clenched his fist, punched the air above his head, and held the pose in a lame anticlimax.

Xlack would have kicked him out just for that, but instinct whispered louder in his ear, and his breath stalled in his throat. Information could be conveyed instantly via any number of devices. Aylata Messengers rarely performed the function implied by their caste title anymore, not unless the message contained instructions they had to see carried out. What could the emperor want with him?

He recalled rumors flying across the dataseas. Emperor Kys and his heirs were dead. The Aylata hid it from public knowledge to avoid widespread mayhem.

Those were only rumors, right? Despite his reputation as a prankster, Vlokem wouldn’t dare joke about this.

Fighting the urge to step back, Xlack swallowed, set Rell on the fluffy carpet, and gestured for him to stay. “Emperor Kys lives?”

“Uh, no.” Vlokem opened the cupboard, and the pale, plain scarf that denoted his Messenger caste snagged on the corner. “You got anything with flavor in here?”

“Who sent you, then?”

“The new emperor.”

Xlack crossed his arms. Getting information out of a Messenger sent to tell him stuff shouldn’t have been this hard.

“Who is the new emperor?”

“Just before the Ravida died, he named his son, Revel K’alaqk, emperor.”

Xlack felt like he had taken another datapad to the forehead, only this one was as big as a building and he lay flat beneath it. With a step back, he slid over the armrest of a lounge chair and plopped on its oversized cushion, his ashen curls falling over his eyes.

“The Ravida’s dead, too?”

“Yeah, some mystery disease wiped him out along with Emperor Kys and some other important people. You didn’t know that?”

“Obviously not.”

Vlokem shrugged and turned back to the cupboard. “Not my fault. Try to keep up, will you?”

Xlack’s mind raced. Why hadn’t he heard about any of this?

They were covering it up. Very few people knew. When the public found out, there would be chaos.

Rell padded closer to his master and let out a worried whine. At a second ‘stay’ signal, he sat. Practicing command signs usually involved treats. His tail slithered across the floor so fast, his little rump wiggled.

“Okay, Vlokem, you got me,” Xlack admitted. “I couldn’t tell you were joking.”

“That’s ’cause I’m not.”

“Revel K’alaqk can’t be emperor. No Aylata can. That’s treason.”

“Actually, it’s only an unwritten law that says an Aylata can’t be emperor, so depending on how you look at it, you could see it as okay. But no one cares about my opinions. I’m just delivering his message.”

Xlack stood, arms crossed and eyes in a crooked, frowning squint. “And that would be, finally?”

“He wants to see you about a special mission. You have”—Vlokem glanced at his datapad—“five hours to arrange for your district and rendezvous at Aylata Tower.”

Azmet hid in a verdant crater just south of Napix’s equator. Aylata Tower sat within Kobolast, a district that straddled the central latitude of Napix’s northern hemisphere, slid a smidgen west from Azmet and teeming with forests and lakes. It would take the entire time allotted to reach if using available ground transportation.

Xlack had no idea what to expect when he arrived. They were equals, but Revel K’alaqk acted like Xlack didn’t exist, and now he summoned him out of nowhere? This was too strange to ignore.

“Vlokem, you ever wish you were something other than a Messenger?”

A grin resided in Vlokem’s replying voice, but his face was lost somewhere in the cupboard. “Only when you’re not thinking about how much you want to be a Messenger.”

“Then watch my district while I’m gone.”

Vlokem fell backward and caught hold of the cupboard door to steady himself. “What?”

Already headed for the exit with Rell leaping at his heels, Xlack waved dismissively. “Consider it a favor.”

“But…” Vlokem’s small eyes became slits. “How exactly are you planning on getting there?”

A smirk snuck across Xlack’s lips. “I’ll fly your Oha. Since you’re staying here, you won’t need it. Never fail.”

Before Vlokem could protest, the door slid shut.

Continued in Chapter 3: Beyond the Cage

Thank you for reading!