Page 14 of Bought by the Broken Beast
VOTOI
T he horrifying truth of the manifests settles over us in the cold, smoky air of the forge.
A massacre. Malacc does not intend to simply cut the head off the serpent; he means to burn the entire nest. The Zusvak, the Zu Kus, every Vakkak and Zotkak of note, all consumed in a storm of forbidden alchemical fire.
It is a plan of such breathtaking dishonor, of such utter contempt for our people and our traditions, that it leaves me reeling.
And we are the only ones who know. Two fugitives, a disgraced gladiator and a human slave, stand between the kingdom and annihilation. The weight of it is a physical pressure, a crushing force that threatens to extinguish the small, flickering flame of our hope.
“The postponed festival buys us time,” Bella says, voice a low, steady thing that cuts through the roaring chaos in my mind.
She is already thinking, analyzing, her mind a sharp, precise weapon against the encroaching darkness.
“But it also makes our task a hundred times harder. The weapons will be smuggled in, hidden, and we will have no idea when the strike will come.”
She is right. We are fighting a shadow, an enemy whose final move is now a mystery. We cannot stop the shipments—five ships, five different entry points, it is an impossible task for two people. We cannot warn the King—we would be cut down by Malacc’s guards before we ever reached the palace gates.
For a moment, I am back in the arena, outnumbered, unarmed, the chaos of the crowd is a deafening wave of condemnation. The feeling is the same. Hopelessness. The cold, bitter certainty of defeat.
But I am not the same Minotaur I was in the arena.
I am not the same beast I was even yesterday.
I look at Bella, at the fierce, unyielding intelligence in her eyes, at the smudge of soot on her cheek, at the quiet, unshakeable courage that radiates from her small frame.
She did not break in Kairen’s study. She did not break in the face of my rage. She will not break now.
And neither will I.
“We cannot do this alone,” I say, words a confession, a surrender of the solitary pride that has been my only companion for so long. To ask for help is a weakness I have never allowed myself. But to refuse it now, to let my pride condemn the kingdom, that is the greater dishonor.
I need an army. And I know the only place to find one.
I send the message the only way I can. A small, fleet-footed Fiepakak street urchin, his face all sharp angles and hungry eyes, is willing to be a messenger for the price of a single gold coin from Bella’s satchel.
The message is not written. It is a simple, spoken phrase, one that will mean nothing to anyone but its intended recipient.
“The bitter draught has grown stale. It is time to tap a new barrel.”
We wait. We wait as the sun sets, as the forge grows cold, as the sounds of the city shift from the clamor of commerce to the drunken revelry of the night.
Every footstep in the alley outside is a potential threat, every shout a possible alarm.
Bella eventually succumbs to an exhausted, fitful sleep, her head resting on a pile of discarded leather aprons.
I do not sleep. I watch. I listen. I wait.
Hours later, a soft, rhythmic knock comes at the forge door. Three taps, a pause, then two more. The signal.
I move to the door, my hand resting on the hilt of the sword I took from Kairen’s guard. I slide the heavy bar and open the door a crack. Lyra stands in the rain-slicked alley, her scarred face impassive, a heavy cloak hiding her form.
“The barrel is tapped,” she says, voice a low murmur. “The patrons are thirsty.”
I give a single, sharp nod and follow her into the night, Bella a silent shadow at my back.
The back room of The Bitter Draught smells of stale ale, unwashed bodies, and a deep, abiding hopelessness.
It is a small, windowless space, lit by a single, sputtering oil lamp that casts long, dancing shadows on the rough-hewn wooden walls.
The men gathered here are the dregs of our society, the broken and the forgotten, the very men the kingdom has cast aside.
Grak, the old Fiepakak hunter who aided us in the woods, stands by the hearth, his arms crossed over his broad chest, his expression grim.
With him are the five other hunters, their faces weathered and hard, their eyes holding the quiet, watchful patience of men who live their lives on the edge of a blade.
In the other corner, slumped around a crude wooden table, are the gladiators.
There are ten of them, massive, scarred beasts of the arena, their bodies a testament to a hundred brutal battles.
I know them all. There is Kor, a bull of a Minotaur who lost an eye but not his ferocity.
There is Hakar, a former Vakkak like myself, disgraced for a lesser crime, his spirit now drowned in ale.
And there is Zorn, a freedman who fought his way out of the arena, only to find the world outside was just a larger, colder cage.
They are the men I bled with, the men I fought beside and against. They are the men I freed with my winnings in my early days, a foolish act of a noble trying to cling to his honor in a place that had none.
They owe me their lives, a debt they have been repaying with cynical, drunken loyalty.
They all look at me, their expressions a mixture of curiosity, pity, and a deep, abiding weariness. Then their eyes shift to Bella, and the mood curdles. Suspicion. Contempt. A human. A woman. Here, in their last refuge.
“You asked us to come, Saru,” Grak says, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that cuts through the tense silence. “So we have come. Now speak. Why have you dragged us from our beds and our cups?”
I step into the center of the room, the flickering lamplight casting my shadow, large and monstrous, on the walls around me. I am one of them. A disgraced warrior, a broken thing. I cannot command them as a Vakkak lord. I must appeal to them as an equal.
“I have not come to ask for your loyalty to the Zusvak,” I begin, my voice a low, steady thing.
“I have not come to ask you to fight for the Zu Kus, or for the Vakkak lords who look down on you as dirt beneath their boots. The kingdom has forgotten you. It has cast you out, left you to rot in the arena or scrape a living from the mud. I know this. Because it has done the same to me.”
A murmur runs through the room. Hakar, the drunken ex-Vakkak, lets out a short, bitter laugh. “So what is this, then? A pity party for the fallen?”
“This,” I say, my voice rising, gaining a hard, sharp edge, “is about honor.”
Another bitter laugh from Hakar. “Honor? Look around you, Saru. There is no honor in this room. It was beaten out of us, bled out of us, and sold for the price of a ticket.”
“No,” I counter, my gaze sweeping over each of them, meeting their cynical, broken eyes.
“The honor they took from us was a title. A name. A piece of armor. It was a thing they gave, and a thing they could take away. It was a lie. True honor… true honor is not given. It is forged. It is forged in the dirt, in the blood, in the desperation of a fight you know you cannot win. It is the loyalty you show to the man fighting at your side. It is the courage to stand when every instinct tells you to run. It is the thing you earn for yourself, and it is the one thing they can never take from you.”
The room is silent now, the only sound is the hiss of the oil lamp.
“There is a serpent in the heart of this city,” I continue, my voice a low, dangerous growl.
“A Vakkak lord who wears his honor like a fine cloak to hide the treason in his heart. His name is Malacc. He is planning to burn the kingdom to the ground, to murder the King and the entire Senate, so that he may rule over the ashes. He uses his title, his given honor, as a shield for his corruption.”
I gesture to Bella, who stands by the door, her small frame rigid, her expression fierce.
“This human, this slave, she has more honor in her heart than Malacc has in his entire bloodline. She risked her life not for a title, not for coin, but because it was the right thing to do. Her courage… it reminded me of what it truly means to be Vakkak.”
Grak, the old hunter, takes a step forward, his gaze hard. “These are heavy words, Saru. You ask us to go to war against a High Lord of the Zu Kus. You ask us to die for a kingdom that would not spit on us if we were on fire.”
“I do not require you to die for the kingdom,” I say, my voice dropping, becoming a raw, personal plea.
“I need you to fight for the honor you forged for yourselves. I ask you to stand against a man who represents the very corruption that cast you out. I request that you to fight for the soul of Milthar, the one that exists not in the marble halls of the Senate, but here, in the hearts of its forgotten sons.”
The silence following is absolute. The weight of my request hangs, a tangible thing. I have offered them nothing but a chance to die for a cause they have no reason to believe in. I have offered them nothing but my own broken honor as a banner.
The grizzled leader of the hunters, Grak, steps forward. His gaze moves from me to Bella, his eyes lingering on her for a long, assessing moment. He sees not a weak human, but the source of this fire, this impossible hope. He sees the truth of my words reflected in her defiant stance.
He turns back to me, and a slow, grim smile spreads across his weathered face. He gives a single, sharp nod.
“For you, Saru,” he says in a gravelly voice, the name a restoration, a benediction. “We fight.”