Page 35

35

Order

Idris

A lanky form materialized from a stand of alders ahead, his plain black breastplate glinting faintly in the starlight. “It’s a wonder your mouth-breathing hasn’t gotten you killed,” the familiar voice said. “I could hear you from a half-mile away.”

“Heris.” Idris exaggerated a sniff. “I’d point out your need for better hygiene, but I have a feeling past lovers have already brought that to your attention.”

The other knight laughed mirthlessly as he stalked out of the shadows, halting about six paces away from Idris in the small clearing. Heris was tall and rangy, with sharp cheekbones and a narrow, angular jaw and chin. The black void of his missing right eye added further harshness to his appearance. At court, Heris took to wearing an eyepatch, but out in the wilds, Idris knew he preferred to let the scar breathe.

Idris hadn’t seen Heris in years. He’d done his best to avoid the man responsible for his brother’s death.

“To what do I owe the displeasure?” Idris prompted.

The world quieted, then—an effect of Heris’s sound magic. Like Anya, he could dampen sound, insulate their conversation to keep their secrets contained. It was an eerie thing, to be so immersed in the music of night, only to have it go suddenly silent.

“As usual, Idris, you are the cause of your own peril.”

Idris scoffed, even as his palm on Halgren’s hilt tightened. He lifted his gaze to the longbow strapped to Heris’s back, its elegant curve rising high above the knight’s head. On someone else, the weapon might’ve appeared graceful, even beautiful, but in Heris’s possession, it looked just as thin and wicked as its owner. Of course, to survive the Order for as long as Heris had was the true mark of wickedness.

Idris wondered what his own longevity said about him. Perhaps the same.

Idris widened his stance, both impatient and defensive. “Speak plainly or go.”

Heris lifted his chin. “Your stunt in Brine could prove costly.”

“What do you know of Brine?”

“ Please ,” Heris said, “you know how fast rumors travel.”

In villages, sure, but not among knights of the wilds. Idris thought about the movements of monsters and the machinations of the Order. Heris usually favored the northern forests, and therefore rarely traveled as far south as the capital, let alone to Brine; it was why, in recent years, Idris had stuck to the more central stretches of the Western Wood. Heris’s knowledge of Brine suggested he’d been roaming much closer, as of late.

“Did the mountains become too taxing for your old bones?” Idris quipped.

“You’ve seen it yourself. Abominations are no longer keeping to the fringes. I hunt where the hunting’s good.”

“Then you cannot fault me for doing the same,” Idris said. “Brine was not a stunt, but a mercy, just as all other kills we are charged with.”

Heris scoffed. “Brine provided a choice: uphold the secret of our Oath or go for the glory of a public kill.”

Idris opened his mouth to argue, then faltered. “You knew of the abomination in Brine?”

“I’d been tracking it for the better part of a week.”

Idris thought of the innocent man who’d died trying to eradicate the monster from the barn—the husbandless wife, the fatherless boy—and swore. “I should’ve known it was not chance but incompetence that drove it into a township,” he growled. “How could you know of its presence and not act? How could you do nothing when the tenets of our Oath require us to—”

“How dare you question my loyalty to the Oath,” Heris snapped, “when you yourself have all but broken yours.”

Idris went rigid. “I have done no such thing.”

“You have done something far worse than a forfeited kill.” The dark socket of Heris’s eye narrowed. “You violated the secret of our Order.”

“By saving a town from death?” Idris might’ve tasted the Oath’s warning once or twice in Brine, but it hadn’t broken. His tattoo was still intact. He waved a dismissive hand. “The secret of which you speak was already out.”

“The secret of the monsters, perhaps, but history is laden with tall tales of frightening creatures roaming dark forests,” Heris said. “By slaying it as no ordinary person could, in broad daylight , you revealed yourself as something other .”

“That is hardly the same as breaking the Oath,” Idris stated, but inside, his assuredness faltered.

Why hadn’t he thought to slay the creature after dark, in the dead of night, when no one was around to witness? He could’ve been stealthy about it, but the embarrassing fact of the matter was that he hadn’t even considered it. You have to help , Anya had insisted, and Idris hadn’t even questioned it. He’d just…stepped forward.

It wasn’t Anya’s fault, of course. It was his . He’d allowed himself to get swept up in playing a hero for her. After rescuing her, he’d forgotten the full extent of his Oath’s demands. It had been a relief to spend time with someone who understood even the smallest fraction of the reality of his life. But even Anya’s awareness of his Oath had been too much, too revealing—he might not have told her his secrets outright, but he’d allowed her to come to conclusions without proper mitigation. In the comfort of being seen, he’d been complacent.

Anya truly had become Idris’s weakness. More than he’d realized. More than he wanted to admit.

Heris must’ve noticed Idris’s shift in mood because he smiled wolfishly. “You’re just like your brother,” he said. “Brash. Clumsy. A hopeless fuckup, undeserving of absolution. A traitorous Oathbreaker—”

Idris was on Heris in a heartbeat, fists swinging. But Heris expected the outburst, sidestepping the violence, slimy as an eel. Idris’s fist met only air, and anticlimactically, he turned away from the other man. Scrubbing a hand over his jaw, Idris gathered himself. Gathered his anger. Shoved it down.

He was glad Heris had silenced their conversation from Anya’s potential eavesdropping—not only had Heris shielded her from the secrets of their Order, he’d spared her from witnessing Idris’s embarrassing temper, his lapse in control.

“I’m doing you a favor,” Heris snarled. “I offer you the same merciful warning I offered your brother. Keep your head down, stay in line, and do your duty. Say nothing more of Brine, and your Oath will remain intact.”

Idris kept his back to Heris, still seething. The older knight spoke of favors and warnings, but it was not mercy that drove Heris—it was greed.

Their Order was not made up of heroes, after all, but criminals. For the lucky few prisoners who fit the criteria to become a Knight of the Order of the Valiant, the choice was simple: face dungeon time (or execution, if the crime was bad enough) or take the Oath. The Lord played it off as rehabilitation, but at its heart, their Order was a sentence.

Magic and rewards kept the criminals in line.

The Oath’s magic was bitter and strong, preventative of most small offenses, such as saying too much in mixed company. But forsake the Oath entirely, and the magic would report it to the Oath Ledgers, enacting the original punishment of dungeon or death. Even former knights who’d long-since earned out of their sentences could—in their newfound freedom—break that last thread of their Oath and face their original consequences.

In short: the secret of the Order was one a knight bore for eternity.

Rewards helped sweeten the deal. Compete for most kills in a year—which were also tracked by the ledgers—and knights would be rewarded with money and sometimes even shortened sentences. And since most Valiant Knights were nefarious and disloyal in nature, in-fighting and competition were common—if not expected and encouraged. For the good of the realm, of course.

It was riches and potential freedom that drove Valiant Knights like Heris to form smaller factions within the Order, no better than dungeon gangs pretending to have autonomy in their powerless existence. Hunting parties could track and take down monsters more reliably, and they gamed the reward system to favor the hierarchy of the faction.

Knights like Grinnick sent monetary rewards home to family; knights like Heris amassed wealth for the sake of power—of exactly what sort, Idris still did not know, only that Heris had made it his mission to earn as much as possible. Rumors claimed he’d earned out of his sentence altogether, yet he chose to remain, taking money over freedom for some secret end.

Idris didn’t much care what Heris aspired to. It was Heris’s faction—referred to as the Bad Blues, renowned for their strategies and wealth within the Order of the Valiant—that had brought Grinnick to his doom, and as far as Idris was concerned, no crooked goal of Heris’s was worth Grinnick’s untimely death.

“Mercy,” Idris growled, still facing away from Heris, unable to look upon the bastard. “Is that what you call orchestrated murder?”

Heris laughed cruelly. “Your brother had it coming, but we both know it came from you , not me.”

Idris’s fists tightened. His chest felt packed full of hot coals, aching and steaming.

Grinnick had never spoken to Idris about the Order, of course, but he’d visited Idris plenty over the six years of his tenure. That—along with what Idris had learned when he snuck into Grinnick’s Oath ceremony—had allowed Idris to infer quite a lot. As a knight, Grinnick fought secret foes to protect Fenrir. He’d joined a faction of fellow knights who offered him camaraderie. And he was good at it, earning more than double Idris’s meager wages as a garrison at Fenrir Castle, and sending the vast majority of it home to Idris.

But what Grinnick earned in rewards was matched in jealousy from other knights. Grinnick’s stories were vague, but Idris read between the lines, and as the years went by, he became worried about his brother’s safety within the Bad Blues. When Grinnick told Idris he was going on a particularly treacherous journey with his “fellows,” and would not visit for a month, Idris feared the worst. With the foolishness only a little brother could possess, he decided to tail his brother into the wilds.

Not long into the trip, Idris learned the full truth of his brother’s charge. Idris witnessed his first abominations, overheard the extent of the in-fighting in the faction, and saw Heris—their leader—for who he was: a greedy criminal.

Idris also saw just how skilled Grinnick had become at killing abominations. The Bad Blues had been tracking a massive parent-monster—called a Morta—and had felled numerous lesser abominations in its wake. The blue glow of Grinnick’s battle-axe had arced gracefully through the air to strike down three out of four in only a handful of days.

But in a group where killing blows were predetermined by rank—not skill—Grinnick’s success disrupted the hierarchy. It had only taken a few nights of eavesdropping for Idris to understand how things worked within the faction. Grinnick was supposed to injure the monsters and allow Heris and other higher-ranking members of the Bad Blues to make the final kill—and therefore reap the monetary rewards—but in the chaos of the fights, Idris had seen Grinnick step out of line to take the kills for himself.

The other men ribbed him for “stealing” rewards from the higher-ranking knights. Their jests were chummy but tinged with contempt. Grinnick—clearly high on a sense of belonging—didn’t hear the disdain in his fellow’s jests around the campfire.

But Idris had.

Before dawn on the tenth day, Idris revealed himself to Grinnick, and begged him to abandon the chase, lest his comrades betray him out of resentment—but Grinnick wouldn’t listen. He scolded Idris for following, told him it risked his Oath for Idris to learn their ways, and demanded Idris go home.

Idris would not abandon his brother, though. He followed the hunting party from a greater distance, catching up when he heard the sounds of battle. Idris arrived on the scene in time to watch Heris parry Grinnick’s killing blow, pushing him in line with the monster’s swiping claws. Idris rushed from the underbrush, screaming a warning for Grinnick—“watch out!”—and as Grinnick turned, the monster’s claws opened his belly just below his breastplate.

He fell, while Heris took the kill for himself.

Idris held Grinnick while he bled, while his brother’s so-called friends fled the scene.

As the light faded from Grinnick’s eyes, so, too, did the black line of his Oath tattoo. Grinnick used his dying breaths to tell Idris everything—not just to spare Idris of the confusion of never knowing the true nature of his brother’s role, but to warn Idris about the others. It was the knights’ duties to contain the secret, and now that Idris knew the existence of monsters and had seen the magic bestowed upon them by their Order, they would turn their sights on hunting him down and silencing him.

Grinnick urged Idris to sneak into the next ceremony and join the Order to protect himself, and at the moment of Grinnick’s final breath, a small gap formed in his tattoo, right at the base of his throat. At the time, Idris hadn’t known what it meant; he didn’t truly understand his brother’s broken Oath until his own Oath ceremony.

In Idris’s eyes, Grinnick had always been too good for the world. Rakish at times, and over-confident, but also kind and playful and feeling. After six years in the Order, Grinnick had come to love protecting the realm; but he’d taken his love and loyalty for Idris to his grave. On the edge of death, Grinnick had broken his Oath to warn Idris of the Order’s wrath; he’d protected his little brother one last time.

But Grinnick’s logic was flawed.

By breaking his Oath to Idris, his death was not recorded. It was this, as well as Idris’s possession of Grinnick’s breastplate, that drew the Lord’s attention. It’s how Idris had been punished with his brother’s sentence, unable to leave the Order willingly but by the laws of his brother’s crimes. And it’s how Idris had ended up here: spending his life in his brother’s shadow, seeking absolution for Grinnick’s memory, lest his grief and guilt swallow him whole.

Yet Idris had found purpose in his brother’s old charge. It was impossible not to take at least some pride in the role. The Order allowed the guilty to repent, and his Oath became the perfect way to punish himself for Grinnick’s dishonor, retreat from further heartbreak, yet still do some good for the world.

Since his own taking of the Oath, Idris had done his best to remain separate from the worst factions of the Order of the Valiant, but he’d never forgotten Heris’s betrayal. Nor had Heris forgotten Idris’s role that day.

Idris turned, facing Heris again. “Why involve yourself in the matter of Brine? Why take issue with my Oath? After all this time, what’s in it for you?”

“I am a mere messenger,” Heris said coolly—but his shoulders had stiffened.

Idris must’ve hit a vein. “You’re too selfish to be a messenger. We both know the Order is failing, and in the name of our Oath, you seek to keep that fact a secret,” Idris said. “You don’t honor our duty but hide behind it. Why?”

“Our Oath, our duty ,” Heris spat, “is a sentence. Not everyone is a masochist like you, entering the Order of their own free will—”

“You would’ve killed me for what I learned—what I knew.” Idris had needed the magic of the Oath to level the playing field between himself and the Valiant Knights who hunted him. He hadn’t had a choice.

Unless…

Idris couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him before: Heris must’ve heard Idris trailing them on that Fates-damned hunt. “Why didn’t you kill me when you first heard me?”

“Finally figured it out, did you?” Heris grinned. “It was better for morale that I not foil him. Better it be you.”

The rage in Idris’s chest flared. “But you blocked his killing blow!”

“A mistake in the melee,” Heris said with a dismissive wave. “ You distracted him outright.”

Idris’s temples ached—with tension, with memory, with self-hatred and regret. He’d been so, so naive. Heris had used him to murder Grinnick. Had Idris not followed, Grinnick might’ve lived.

Idris deserved every ounce of misery he’d endured in this Fates-forsaken Order. He deserved never to leave its painful clutches.

“Order or no, every citizen in Fenrir has to claw for the life they want,” Heris went on. “You blame me for your brother’s death, but did you ever think to question why we hated him so thoroughly? He was just as ruthless as the rest of us.”

“Take that back,” Idris growled.

He wanted to knock the other knight’s yellowed teeth out, but for all the years Idris had dreamed of settling the score by beating Heris senseless—even taking Heris’s life—no amount of revenge or violence would bring his brother back.

“You call me a masochist,” Idris said, “yet you remain in the Order of your own free will, just as I do. So, I ask you one last time: if you despise your sentence so much, why not end it? Why concern yourself with mine?”

“We all love to feel like good guys, Idris,” Heris said with a smirk. “Even me. The Fate of the realm rests on the continued secrecy of our charge. Not just to prevent the inevitable panic of Fenrir’s citizens, but to conceal the Lord’s hand in this conspiracy.”

Idris frowned disbelievingly. “The Lord would never—”

“The Lord is a fool—and I know you don’t disagree. But if the Order of the Valiant fails, so, too, does the order of Fenrir itself. Remember your duty, Idris—not just for the sake of your vengeance, but for the greater good.”

“You know nothing of what’s good.”

“I know as much as you do, I reckon,” Heris said. “But if you truly care about that pretty thing you’re traveling with, you’d do well to stay in line. She already knows too much.”

At that, the sound barrier dropped, and the sounds of night pressed in again—a cacophony compared to the silence Heris had willed.

The mention of Anya had Idris running back to camp.