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Chapter 33



Witch Hunter Javed had never really felt guilt before.

He could understand the concept, and act like he was feeling it well enough to convince anyone, yet guilt remained a thing that others experienced which he could not. When he was a child, he had always simply done what he felt like doing. There were always consequences to those actions, especially if he got caught, but at no point had he ever fretted about his deeds. He simply lied his way out of trouble. As he had gotten older, Javed had recognized that he was different, unable to feel emotions that others took for granted.

As a boy he had been told about a marvelous lizard that lived in the Gujaran jungles, called a chameleon, which could change its color and markings at will to blend in to its surroundings, allowing it to hunt its prey while avoiding its predators. That had struck Javed as a brilliant philosophy to live by, and he prided himself on adopting the chameleon’s ways. Displaying his true nature marked him as odd, dangerous, and thus a target, so he had become extremely proficient at pretending to be whatever those around him required him to be.

There was always a need in the Capitol for handsome, charismatic, amoral liars. After Great House Zarger had obligated him to serve the Inquisition, Grand Inquisitor Omand had recognized in young Javed great potential. Only the most cunning and magically talented Inquisitors could become elite witch hunters, and even then it took most of them years to cultivate the devious methods that came naturally to Javed. He quickly increased in rank and status. He didn’t care about the Law, but he enjoyed rooting out those who would fight against it. They were goals to be conquered. In challenge, he had found purpose. Infiltrating, deceiving, spying, and assassinating were difficult activities, and he took great pleasure in succeeding where lesser men would fail.

Javed had done a great many terrible things on his assignments, all untroubled by conscience…until this one.

“Hurry up before we’re spotted, priest!” the warrior shouted from the road below.

“There’s dust rising to the north, Deng. I need to see if it’s travelers or a patrol.” Javed leaned back over the edge of the cliff to say that, and once satisfied that the warrior believed him and would stay on the trail with the horses, he went back out of sight to continue digging the sand out from beneath a rock.

There was no dust in the distance. Javed could have led the Sons across the entire desert without being seen once if he’d felt like it. However, he had needed a momentary distraction to dig atop this hill without his companion noticing. Once Javed’s fingers found the clay pot, he pulled it free of its hiding place. A scorpion crawled from beneath the boulder and scurried away. Thankfully it didn’t sting his hand. That had been an act of respect, one venomous creature to another.

Javed removed the lid from the pot and found it empty, not surprising considering how sparse the population was in this region. There wasn’t much for the Inquisition’s informants to inform on.

“Is it the army or not?” Deng Somsak demanded from below.

The two of them had been sent ahead of the Sons to scout the path. The Somsak was an experienced raider, but this was unfamiliar country to him, while Javed knew this land like the back of his hand. It had been easy to steer Deng this way, and then, of course, someone had to hold the horses while the other climbed up the high ground to have a look around.

“One moment, friend.”

He took from his pocket the note he’d hastily written in an Inquisition cipher, and then paused. When the local Inquisitors saw that some of the colorful banners along the trade route had been rearranged, they would know to check this drop location for a message. When they saw his priority marking, word would be sent via demon bone direct to the Grand Inquisitor’s attention. If Omand willed it, the local garrisons would be mobilized, the aqueduct would be protected, and the Sons destroyed. Instantaneous magical communication was a powerful, albeit expensive, tool, and the Inquisition made better use of it than anyone.

Javed had brought enough demon with him to work such magic himself, but his instincts had warned him against using it. Something about Thera’s demeanor recently had indicated that she was more suspicious than usual, and it had been ever since he had been forced to take the lives of those two boys. His instincts were seldom wrong, so he had hidden his demon bones in one of the gunner’s packs, buried inside a pouch of Fortress powder, where it would be unlikely to be found until they engaged in battle, as the gunners were constantly admonished never to toy with the dangerous stuff. If he found out for sure that Thera did expect there was a secret wizard among their number, Javed would find a way to present that hapless gunner to her.

Luckily for him, the Inquisition had many other methods of sending messages.

Yet Javed hesitated.

The note was simple. It gave away the Sons’ target, their numbers, and the makeup of their forces. It also indicated Javed could not be reached via demon at this time, and any further instructions for him would need to be given by other means. It concluded with an account of Thera’s manifestation of the Voice, that she was not a fraud as suspected, and that there was some manner of unknown witchcraft working within her.

That last part was what had been troubling him the most.

He was a witch hunter. He’d seen every kind of vile, debased, and aberrant magic in Lok. The Voice had been something new and different. It was as Keta had said, an entity that spoke directly to his mind. At first he had dismissed the Keeper’s tales as the mad babbling of a fanatic, but there was something to this Voice, and it had bedeviled him ever since he’d witnessed the thing. Tearing at the corners of his mind and keeping him awake at nights. Never before had he experienced bad dreams about anyone he had killed, and now he was plagued with them.

A priest in name only, he scoffed at such superstitious foolishness. Fanatics and their silly religion amused him. Except this…this was different. Thera had cured his uncurable poison. The faithful called that a miracle, though Javed had dismissed it as a trick, but after hearing the supposed Voice of the old gods, he was no longer so sure.

The rebellion it had inspired was not at all what he’d expected either. Keta may have been a madman, yet he was a good man. The Keeper truly cared for his people, especially the weak and useless ones, in a way that Javed could never understand, but had been forced to copy. Managing such a great undertaking as keeping the disparate people of the Cove united and flourishing had been beyond Keta’s abilities, so as a chameleon does, Javed had become what was required, and begun managing the flocks and fields, and teaching the rebels how to thrive. He’d hated it at first, until he’d found that being a priest was just as challenging as being a witch hunter, albeit in entirely different ways.

Vultures circled above the desert, similar to those that feasted upon traitors atop the dome. Or perhaps they were even the same birds? No…for Omand kept those in the Capitol far too well fed for them to stray this far looking for meat. Regardless, the vultures’ circling shadows were a reminder that there was a fine line between pretending to be a traitor and becoming one.

Javed had torn many things down, but he had never actually helped build anything before. The only thing he’d ever created were fake identities for himself, and chaos. For the last year he had helped an entire people forge a new identity for themselves. He had poisoned them, then helped tend their sick. He had comforted the families of children he had murdered. Usually by the end of a long assignment, he was eager for his targets to die, so that he could move on to his next challenge, his next stepping-stone. Yet he didn’t hate these. In fact, he had come to respect this peculiar people, and he lacked the animosity that usually fueled him.

And this coded note would be all that it took to destroy them once and for all. The future he’d helped make would be dashed to pieces.

“Oceans, Javed, are you taking a nap up there? Someone’s gonna come riding down this canyon and then I don’t want to hear any priestly crying about me having to murder all the witnesses!”

Deng was joking, as he had learned that, despite their fearsome countenances, even the Somsak didn’t enjoy being vicious to those who didn’t deserve it. However, Deng had no clue that Javed had done exactly that, murdering witnesses, savagely ending the lives of some of the most innocent among them, all to protect a mission that he was now questioning.

“They’re on camels,” Javed smoothly lied about the nonexistent threat. “The warriors of Dev ride horses here, so they’re probably just regular travelers. I’m on my way down.”

“About damned time,” the impatient warrior said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Alas, if the Voice was real, then Javed had already made himself its enemy by spilling the blood of its believers. The memory of the last two haunted him, more than all who had come before…but what was done was done. Javed put the note in the pot, put the lid back on, and buried it beneath the boulder for his Inquisition brothers to retrieve.

As they rode through the desert back toward the Sons of the Black Sword, Javed wondered if he had done the right thing. He was unused to having such thoughts.


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