A Crime of Honor Read online

  Chapter 4

  Surr strode down the long corridor leading to the armory. A quartet of guards stood at his approach, their emerald armor glinting with the Mantra lines inscribed there. It was no use veiling his purpose. They could see his intent through the Mantra, and he was too far away to disrupt their connection. Lines of emerald light bloomed on their faces and armor as they immersed themselves fully in the Mantra. One of their number fell back, and the others advanced.

  Keira swept past Surr, lunging for the guards. They answered her assault with inhuman reflexes, the Mantra rewriting the nature of their physical bodies to grant increased speed and strength. But she was Rhakari, and Rhakari had no need of the Mantra to surpass humans. The foremost guard lunged at her, slashing with an iron blade. She turned to the side, caught his head in one hand and smashed it against a pillar.

  The second guard lunged at her with a spear while the third slashed with a blade hooked to the end of a long chain. She evaded the spear, caught the chain and drove its blade into the spear-wielding guard. The third guard slipped forward, a dagger glinting in his hands. He stabbed once and slashed twice, but Keira struck his arm aside every time and then punched him. Her blow landed on his breastplate, causing the Mantra lines to flare and sing out a dulcet note. Wholly unaffected by her assault, he retaliated cutting through her war mask without difficulty and gouging a line in her cheek. Unfazed, she caught his arm, snapped it and drove the dagger into his eye.

  A screeching note tore through the Mantra, staggering Surr. The warning call pulsed again, and he looked up just in time to see Keira launch the spear through the final guard. The warning call ceased. He shook his head to clear away the last ringing notes and sprinted toward the armory. He touched the Mantra, using it to decipher the door's pattern. The builders had rewritten its pattern making it impossible to edit its pattern or to force it open by physical power.

  A storm of footsteps thundered through the Mantra, pulling Surr about to face the approaching guards. Keira dropped into a crouch beside him, her form brilliant and crimson in the Mantra's swirling tapestry. He stopped her with a gesture and stepped forward lifting a decorative vase from its plinth. He relinquished his connection to the Mantra as the footsteps grew louder, audible now even without the Mantra, and faced the corner as a dozen guards charged around it.

  Surr could have rewritten their patterns with a touch, or rewritten the patterns of the floor and the walls to kill them, but he hated using the Mantra to kill. They swept forward, spreading out as Mantra lines ignited on their blades, armor and faces. Surr lifted the vase overhead, his Mantra lines extinguished. "Manifest, Aoran Nimac."

  The vase cracked and flared with sudden, boiling heat. The porcelain blackened as fire poured from its livid fractures. The ancient, ancestral weapon of Surr's family woke in his mind. "It has been a long time since you last summoned me, young Surr."

  "I had no need of you until now." Surr swept the molten vase downward, hurling a torrent of thick, cherry flames from its mouth. The approaching guards tried to flee, but the flames caught and devoured them in an instant.

  The vase cracked in Surr's hands, the tiny sound serving as his only warning before the vase melted from the sheer amount of power flowing through it. The presence faded from his mind. Surr tossed the molten remains aside and returned to the door, motioning for Keira to stand back. The lines along his left arm exploded with light as he immersed himself in the Mantra, shredding his tunic sleeve and bathing their surroundings in radiance. Drawing a deep, calming breath to still the frantic beat of his heart, Surr laid his left hand against the door and touched its personal Mantra. He could not rewrite its pattern; the original builders had already ossified the door's pattern, but he could disrupt the Mantra and thus unmake its pattern. The sigils on his left arm flared, and he broke the pattern.

  He glanced at Keira. "Go."

  She nodded and dashed forward, phasing through the formerly solid door as if it were air. At this moment, it was truly nothing more than a mirage, for Surr had segregated the pattern of solidity from its Mantra, effectively rendering it ethereal.

  A crack sounded to his right, drawing his gaze to where a segment of the wall was pulling inward. A moment passed, and Baciles slipped from the secret passage followed by Surr's troops.

  Surr nodded at the armory door. "It's open. Hurry and arm yourselves, then get to work."

  The soldiers streamed past him, working quickly to arm themselves with any Mantra-worked armor or weapons they could find.

  Keira exited as they entered, her arms filled with paper swords, Vessels for Aoran Nimac, and a full suit of emerald Mantra-work armor. She handed the paper swords to Surr and began donning the armor. "Where am I to go now?"

  "Go with the others and prepare for our departure; they will need you if they encounter a true Scribe."

  "And where will you join us?"

  "In the courtyard if things go well, outside the capital if they do not."

  "Baciles has successfully locked the servant's quarters, armories and sleeping floors from the outside; casualties should be minimal. All you need to worry about is Sarizen and his guards."

  "Good."

  The last of his soldiers slipped from the armory and Surr released his disruption. Keira bowed one last time and then sprinted down the hallway with the remaining members of his retinue, all of them now dressed like imperial guards. He pushed them from his mind and looked to the palace ceiling, immersing himself further into the Mantra. He shifted through the countless patterns, pushing them aside in great swaths until only a small number of vibrant lights filled his gaze: the Scribes. He sifted through them until he found the brightest; while he might be a decrepit old man in the solid realm, Sarizen was a towering sun in the Mantra.

  Surr flexed his right hand, rewriting the air so it had mass and upward pressure. He flew toward the ceiling and lifted his left hand to touch the glass, disrupting its pattern. He ghosted through the ceiling and dropped onto the roof. He felt the Mantra change as he crossed from inside the palace to outside it. The patterns of light vanished, replaced by those of dark, and the patterns of calm lost their tranquility for a shuddering violence: a storm approached.

  Surr sprinted forward, rewriting the glass so it clung to his feet just enough to secure his balance. The tattered sleeves of both arms fluttered in the wind, their edges glowing with the Mantra's lingering brilliance.

  A form phased up through the roof before him as he neared Sarizen's quarters. The form twitched and dropped, its white clothing marked with a thousand black letters: a Scribe.

  The Scribe dropped to his knees pressing both hands into the glass roof as his arms erupted with emerald light. The ceiling shattered outward from the Scribe, but Surr continued forward stilling the Mantra around him as he went. The exploding tide of glass struck and passed harmlessly around him, continuing in his wake but leaving the pane where he stood untouched and levitating.

  The Scribe muttered a profanity and straightened, his hands reaching out to either side. Surr grasped one of the paper swords on his belt, tore it free and raised it as the first drops of rain fell from the sky. The small, black Mantra lines adorning the paper sword gleamed, and he spoke, "Manifest, Aoran Nimac." The paper sword burst into fire and swelled in a burst of molten heat.

  Gasping, the scribe reeled back, one hand thrown up as he tried to rewrite the air’s pattern and diminish the heat of his surroundings. Surr swept Aoran Nimac before him, spewing fire from its tip with a deafening roar. The flames shattered the Scribe’s attempts and enveloped him.

  Desperately seeking to rewrite Aoran Nimac's essence, the Scribe extended both hands as his skin blackened; but Inheritance Blades were deceased souls and existed outside the living Mantra: they could not be rewritten.

  Surr felt the paper sword reaching its limit and tossed the blade forward, changing its form even as he dismissed Aoran Nimac. The Inheritance Blade vanished, but its fire lingered compressed into the shape of a burning li
on. The beast howled and vaulted down through the shattered ceiling into the middle of Sarizen's remaining guards. Surr drifted forward, propelling the pane of glass upon which he stood until he hovered over Sarizen's quarters and then dropped down.

  He landed in front of the emperor's bed and straightened to find the man looking at him from a mound of silk pillows.

  "I knew you were rotten wood, Surramad, but I never thought you would attempt a rebellion. Hah! To think that the ever-loyal, ever-honorable Surramad Hakara would turn on the nation that fathered him! It is unbelievable and fit for that cheap fiction people are devouring these days." He hacked into his nightgown. "Do you know, there was once a time when it was actually a privilege to read? Now, even the bastards are learning how to do it."

  Surr moved around the bed, sinking deeper into the Mantra, immersing himself in the small patterns secreted in the larger ones.

  "Oh well, there's no help for it, I guess I'll have to kill you." Sarizen's connection to the Mantra exploded, his whole upper body glowing with emerald light as his nightgown disintegrated. The physical world and the Mantra rippled, changing into water and enveloping Surr.

  Water was hard for a Scribe to control because it was always changing naturally. It was almost impossible to use for that very reason; the only way to use it was to change a more passive object, like stone, into it; but such complete reversal of a Mantra's natural state required almost god-like skill.

  Emotions were the same. They were so volatile in nature, so easily swayed by a simple word that they interfered with a Scribe's inner Mantra. So, the Scribes locked them away, rewriting their own Mantra to exclude emotions. This was the origin of Surr's boxes, but, unlike most Scribes, he could revert that change.

  The water crashed around Surr clawing at him and pressing down, but, instead of changing its pattern, Surr disrupted it. Discord throbbed through the churning, stilling it for an instant, and Surr struck. He rewrote its Mantra, turning the water to ice. He felt Sarizen's wrath explode through the Mantra and deepened his own connection, reaching throughout their immediate environment and froze the Mantra.

  The world fell silent around them, its color fading away, its texture vanishing, its taste disappearing and its smell dying. There was nothing around Surr, not even darkness; they were separated from the Mantra.

  He reached down and spoke without words or sound, "Manifest, Aoran Nimac." Fire bloomed in his hands, for Aoran Nimac was not of the Mantra; this place was more his world than either Surr's or Sarizen's.

  "Manifest, Tenomanin Sefer." Emerald light bloomed in the emptiness as Sarizen stepped forward. He raised his hand, a sphere of liquid light swirling in his palm. "What have you done?"

  "I have taken you to a battlefield where you cannot fight, Uncle. Without the Mantra, you have nothing; even Tenomanin Sefer cannot protect you."

  "We'll see about that!" Sarizen struck, throwing his hands forward and hurling a stream of light. Surr struck it aside with ease; Inheritance Weapons were powerful, but how much of that power one could manifest depended entirely on the user, and Sarizen was frail. Sarizen collapsed into a hacking fit, Tenomanin Sefer extinguishing from his hand.

  "Goodbye, Uncle, I hope you realize that I do not do this from hate or for revenge. I do this because you were poisoning our people and killing this land."

  Sarizen looked up, unable to speak through his coughing, but his eyes cursed Surr with a lifetime of hate as Aoran Nimac's flames devoured him.

  Surr dispelled Aoran Nimac with a silent farewell and released the Mantra. The world flooded back into focus, leaving him standing at the center of a shattered bedchamber. He turned and ran, vaulting from Sarizen's room to the next ceiling down and so forth until he landed in the courtyard of shoes.

  Keira galloped up to him, guiding a second horse with one hand while a pair of leather boots and a coat lay across her saddle. She reached him and tossed the traveling gear. "Is he dead?"

  Surr kicked off his slippers, pulled on his boots and slipped into the coat. "Yes."

  He swung into the saddle and began to spin the horse forward until a voice split the night, "Why?"

  He turned in the saddle as Cariam sprinted down the steps with nothing more than an iron sword and a green robe to protect him. "Why, Uncle? Why did you have to kill him?" For all of the man's faults, Cariam had loved his grandfather.

  Turning his horse around, Surr rode up beside the young man. "I did what I thought right, Your Majesty. Sarizen was killing this land with his bigotry and his greed. I understand that this is treason, and I take full responsibility for these actions."

  Cariam slumped to the ground. "But you swore oaths..."

  "Yes, I swore oaths to the emperor, but also to this nation and her people. When faced with a choice between the two, I chose the path that would lead to the least pain. Call me what you will, Your Majesty, but I still consider myself a servant of the crown and her people. I will send the summer tribute when the time comes, and I ask that you do not slaughter my messengers."

  "Please, Uncle, take the throne."

  "It is not my place to rule this kingdom, and I did not commit this sin for power."

  "Please! They'll want me to kill you!"

  "I know, and, if I were alone, I would accept their judgment. But, I made a promise to my wives and to my children that I would return to them, and I have broken enough promises today."

  Surr turned his stallion around and rode away, Keira, Baciles and the rest of his soldiers falling into step.

  Sneak Peek

  The Darkness That Slept