Measure of a Messenger ch 1: Only Fools

In a moment, it was gone. A flash, then nothing—worse than nothing. Shrapnel spread like dust, mingling with the speckle of distant stars.

And they said it was his fault.

Zah Eenan mumbled incoherent words, repeated them over and over, a useless battering ram against these steel walls and shield-woven bars. It smelled like the rotted whatnot that had been in here before him, but he had ceased to notice. In the eight days he had been in here, Zah had ceased to notice much of anything, even the voices and proddings of his interrogators as they plagued him day by day, seeking confession.

Even Zah doubted his own innocence now.

For the moment, he was alone, curled in a corner, one arm draped across his eyes. The cell’s grime caked his short, pale hair and splotched his deep-gray skin. Though still discolored and somewhat swollen, the elbow they had several times broken was mostly healed.

Bones always mended first for those like Zah, recovery starting on the inside and working its way out. The more minor injuries accompanying yesterday’s inquiries had already vanished.

Such healing ability was not an official Talent of the Aylata, hybrid sons of the Napix homeworld and the planet Magni. Napix was now the name of the vast empire they watched over. Magni was desolate, the reason for its destruction forgotten.

Zah was an Aylata and had never had reason to dream of being anything else. Aylata were above the purebred Napix noblemen, respected even by the emperor. Without his body’s uncanny ability to repair itself quickly, Zah would have been dead by now, but he couldn’t keep this up forever.

Where could he run? He didn’t even know if the legion’s Defender was still alive, and they assured him all other Aylata within a week’s journeying distance had perished.

That meant the tragedy was real. And they blamed it on him.

Another scent approached, different from the sour rot that reigned here but no less offensive. Zah wanted to ignore it, but it tugged at his memory.

Before the familiarity fully registered, a rough cloth was jammed over his mouth and nose. It reeked of foul spices and tugged him toward unconsciousness.

Holding his breath, Zah twisted toward his assailant, and his elbow crashed into a chest. His face was released as his foe stumbled back, but before he could get up, a kick found his kidneys. Breath gone, he fell flat. A burning soreness surged through him as he rolled away from further blows.

“This should be over by now,” his attacker seethed, boot striking Zah’s back again. “I heard them call the Fifth Ravi like you begged them to, just as I was told you would.”

Zah’s feet coiled under him, but he stayed low, captured the enemy’s next kick, and directed it past him, twisting it so his foe fell. Zah was upon him instantly, but his opponent was wily and slipped away, drawing a weapon as he stood.

The dormant handle gleamed in the near dark. With the touch of a button, it would sprout a knife-like, flat laser blade the length of Zah’s hand—a kanaber, standard issue for any of the troopers in this legion.

But this was no trooper.

Coming at him from behind, Zah caught his foe’s wrist and yanked it back. The attacker spun toward him, and Zah used that momentum to swing him into the wall. The partition between this cell and the next dented. Zah pushed him harder against the stained, metallic surface and kicked the kanaber free of its master’s hand.

“Why do you want me dead?” Zah’s voice was weak, little more than a pant, but he tried to set his features in an intimidating glare.

It was lost on this audience.

His foe’s four eyes—two decently sized and spaced like a typical humanoid’s, two smaller and placed at the bottom corners of the first—identified him as Zalerit, even if his scent was much sweeter than what he had come to expect from that race.

Zah had excellent night vision. That was an Aylata Talent, included with a full set of keen senses, though this was the most common and least valued. By contrast, Zalerits could not see well in the dark. They feared it, hated it, panicked in its presence.

Yet this one, even pinned as he was, wore an aloof calm.

“Your death might expedite matters.” The Zalerit sneered, voice low and deliberate with a hissing lisp that sent shivers through Zah. “Your corpse might give your sister more reason to convince the Fifth Ravi to show up.”

“You want the Fifth Ravi here.” Zah’s gaze flicked toward the fallen kanaber as he recognized what he faced. “Ravi Kimidjee will kill you.”

The Zalerit made no attempt to escape his hold. No, not just a Zalerit. The rarest and worst of their kind: a Zalerit with Magni heritage. A lightcurver.

“Given what I know, I find the reciprocal much more likely.”

“So share what you know.”

The lightcurver tsked. “My master would not approve.”

Of course. Someone had to be helping this monster, shielding him, teaching him, commanding him. Lightcurvers were the essence of evil, killed as soon as they were discovered, usually as infants. Even those capable of birthing them were often destroyed. Here was one grown to adulthood and audacious enough to challenge Aylata.

Realization widened Zah’s eyes, and he backed off. A whisper escaped. “Did you kill them?”

“Aylata think they are invincible when for the most part they are only fools.”

He pushed away from the wall, circumventing Zah as the sound of many footsteps approached. Zah grabbed at him, but it was like trying to catch a stream.

With the words, “We will resume once they are done with you today,” the lightcurver vanished.

***

Desperation surrounds you, too sweet, too potent, swirled with pride of accomplishment and the thrill of a chase. It isn’t yours. One’s own emotions always carry some marker, some indefinable sense of self. But whosever this desperation is, he is near.

Weightlessness and a bone-jarring impact. A hard, textured floor. Heavy eyes forced open, driven by curiosity and terror. Tears blur the scene beyond recognition. Every part of you hurts.

Cold fingers tap your cheek, accompanying a voice as rough as the floor. “I went through a lot of trouble to pull you out of there. You’d better not die on me.” A stranger’s voice.

You scramble back. Adrenaline overpowers the pain exploding in your side. Where is your teacher, your class?

A hard wall hits your back, too hot. You flinch away and rub a grime-covered sleeve across your stinging eyes. The ethereal green-gold color chrysolite glistens in the grime. Your blood. You’re bleeding, probably a lot.

You try to banish fear from your mind. Aylata are never afraid. Your teacher would be ashamed to see the tears streaking down your face. That must be the source of the stranger’s disgust. He kneels before you, staring, scrutinizing.

According to his attire—durable Adapt material, black and mottled between matte and shiny, clips at his shoulders holding a scarf looped across his front and slung over his left shoulder—he is a Messenger. The scarf’s white color, mottled like the suit, tells he is a recent graduate, older than fourteen but likely younger than twenty. He is not nearly as covered in grime as you are.

“If you want to live, fly this shuttle out of here.”

You try to ask what’s going on, who this person is, but he’s leaving, and you’re half blind. You must have a cut on your forehead. Something warm keeps running into your right eye. You wipe it away again, stumbling after the Messenger.

“Tell me—” you suggest, but he turns on you, slams you against the burning wall, and you scream.

He drops you. Smoke wafts from your jacket, smelling like a gkapu’s rear end as you clamber to your feet. Your side twinges, forcing you back to your knees.

“Mind Talents annoy me.” The Messenger’s mouth doesn’t appear to move, and the voice is smoother than before, but he must be the one who says it. There’s no one else here.

He kneels again, meeting your gaze, and you look to the side as is proper for a Mind Aylata.

“What’s the highest number you can count to?”

“Numbers just keep going,” you retort, confused.

“Then pick a really high number.”

“One thousand.”

The Messenger’s grin is almost comradely. His words are not. “This school will be gone before you can count to one thousand.”

“Gone?”

“Obliterated. It took me a week to place the charges, keeping them hidden, lining them from the volatile energy transformers to every vital bulkhead.” He shrugs. “They’ll assume it was years, but I’m Aylata. I can do anything, right?” Cockiness prances in his grin.

Your mind is a tempest of thoughts, reason blown just beyond your reach. You’re in a shuttle. Fires burn just outside its close walls. You recall walking with your class, following your teacher in an orderly line, sudden flashes, noise, and unbearable heat. You were thrown. You couldn’t breathe. Then darkness, nothing until the Messenger dropped you here.

“The explosives by where you were must have been misplaced, but the others will make up for it. Do you know why I rescued you?”

The world spins as you shake your head. This is a madman, and no one will come save you. Everyone else is dead.

“You’re a Messenger, like me, and I need you to deliver a message.” He points his thumb at himself, too arrogant, too callous.

“Why?” you scream. “Why kill everyone?’

A frown tugs at the Messenger’s grin. “My motivation is not part of the message. Now prove I chose the right kid. Fly this shuttle out of here.”

“Why don’t you fly it?”

Disapproval curves his smooth features into a scowl. “An Aylata can do anything; he shouldn’t have to be rescued. If you can’t even save yourself, it’s no great loss to the world if you die, right?” He pokes you between the eyes, and despite the fires raging all around, the touch is cold, filled with barely restrained malice.

Dread drapes over you It fills your ears with the sound of your own heart and clogs your throat.

You don’t know how to fly a shuttle.

Wen Kimidjee shook his head in an attempt to dispel the looping memory. It belonged to a five-year-old Messenger named Dal Mikka, who had since been sent to Aylata Tower.

Wen didn’t want to feel Mikka’s despair as the Messenger abandoned him, his horror and panic as his attempt to control the shuttle failed to translate into movement, or the boy’s relief as Defender Mesadu’s legion found the battered transport among the debris and rescued him, euphoria quickly soured by self-loathing.

If you can’t even save yourself, it’s no great loss to the world if you die, right?

That malice. Wen had never seen anything like it, especially not on that particular face. The Messenger had been a stranger to Mikka, but Wen knew him. Or thought he knew him. Zah Eenan. Twin brother of Wen’s wife.

Twins were thought to bring good luck in the Napix Empire. Zah certainly was lucky to still be alive. The Amoya territory’s only school for Aylata aged two through five was supposed to resemble the web of an ingenious predator. Now, it looked like detritus floating in a tide pool.

Mikka was the only survivor.

News of the tragedy had immediately reached all corners of Amoya, and masses clamored for Zah’s blood. Yet, Zah could not be executed without the authority of the highest-ranked Aylata, the Ravida, and a recent announcement from the far-away capital told the Ravida had died. That gave Wen, as a Ravi—one of the Ravida’s five possible heirs—more influence than he already had.

The dispatched investigation team had met Mikka halfway between Rinkla Station and the disaster site. The child Messenger had shared his memories with investigators, and at Wen’s insistence, they had shared the memories with Wen. Wise souls had warned that since he lacked Mind Talents, the process would feel very invasive. To view a shared memory was to live it yourself.

He hadn’t known that meant it would haunt him like this.

Wen shook his head again as a vacporter’s chrome door slid shut. His reflection ambushed him from the frame, reminding him he was not a five-year-old Messenger. He was twenty-seven, of medium height and well built, dark, angular features made more noticeable by opaque silver eyes and starlight-colored hair kept in a windswept style.

He wanted to believe in Zah, but evidence against the Messenger piled on that thin sheet of faith, a brittle pane of ice ready to shatter.

“The Messenger is known for his uncanny interest in the practical uses of certain unstable elements,” investigators said, “elements he had unrestricted access to and were utilized in this disaster.”

Zah had been in the complex less than a day, sent to collect the medical personnel requested to aid the ailing Defender Mesadu, hardly the week mentioned to Mikka. Yet, Zah had lived at the complex for years as an apprentice Messenger before his assignment to Mesadu’s legion.

The detonation signal had come from Zah’s returning shuttle, and he had reboarded Mesadu’s flagship alone, no doctors, no pilots, the school he left behind obliterated.

But the most condemning was Mikka’s memory.

You’re a Messenger, like me, and I need you to deliver a message.

He never actually said what that message was.

Flanked by half a dozen armed troopers, Wen stopped before Zah’s cell. The Messenger already stood, lower lip swollen, scabbed, and bleeding anew. His wincing eyes evinced further injuries hidden. The relief Wen expected to see on his friend’s face was not there, and he could not identify the emotion that was. Terror? Frustration?

“Leave, Kimidjee,” Zah charged, voice rough as if grated over tree bark.

Wen ignored him and directed one of the troopers to open the bars.

“No!” Zah retreated, but the cell was small and offered nothing to hide behind.

The shockfield dropped, and bars spiraled into the ceiling, clearing the way for Wen to step into the space with the reassurance, “Chill, Eenan. I’ll figure out what’s going on.”

Zah already pushed him backward, continuing to shake his head. “The lightcurver wants you here. It lured you here to kill you.”

Continued in Chapter 2: I am Your Shadow

Thank you for reading!