Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 48407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
“Sharrim…You are young,” a deeper voice murmured from my memories with the same steady cadence. “You have the power but lack control. Think of all the things he could teach you. Think of the secrets that would open to you.”
My father was born in our pre-history. Before our Shift, there had been another, the one that had ended the previous magic age and ushered in our technological era. The tech-Shift drove my father into hibernation, and he wasn’t the only one who’d gone to sleep. He’d chosen a very short list of people he trusted to support him in the new age. One of them was a quiet man who appeared to be in his sixties. He came from an old family. His father had served my father, as had his father, and his father, and on and on. His real name was Jushur, but my father called him Akku. The Owl.
Quiet, unassuming, always pretending to be less than he was, Jushur went by many different names. He’d moved through the People’s ranks, never drawing attention to himself, excelling at being overlooked and dismissed. He was my father’s secret eyes and ears. He’d served the most troublesome of Legati of the Golden Legion and had kept an eye on Hugh d’Ambray during his tenure as Warlord. When trouble brewed somewhere, Jushur would already be there, on the sidelines, anticipating the crisis and taking subtle steps to deal with it. He had six children, some born in the old age and others in ours, and all of them were just like him, fanatically loyal to my father and his bloodline.
I had discounted him even though he’d spoken to me directly three times. After my father had decided he did want to speak to me again—it took him almost three years—he finally told me about Jushur one night over beer and doughnuts, while he was rearranging the constellations in the sky of his realm to be more aesthetically pleasing.
The man walking next to me looked like a younger version of Jushur and sounded just like him. And he wanted me to know who he was.
Well, wasn’t that just peachy.
Ahead the gates of the arena stood wide open. As we came closer, a sheepish-looking navigator team with green stripes on their jumpsuits led a brown cow out of it. A big, white paw print marked the cow’s butt. Weird way to tag the People’s cows, but okay.
We walked through the gates. The floors of ancient arenas were made of wood and covered with a layer of sand to absorb the blood. This arena was stone, no padding. Every drop of blood was a precious resource.
Two men waited on the arena floor, near the gates. Behind them three vampires crouched in a row, still like statues.
The first man, on my right, was young, in his twenties, tall and thin. Everything about him seemed slightly too long: his dark hair, his nose, his chin. A single red stripe marked the shoulder of his jumpsuit. I’d cracked the code by this point. Red meant cadre, permanent staff of the Farm, and the more red you had, the higher your rank. This guy was pretty low in the chain of command.
A man like Barrett Shaw would have either known or suspected that one of his journeymen was up to no good. There was no reason for this guy to be in the arena if he was just some random navigator.
Hello, Onyx. We finally meet. I’ve come to chat about a child you sold like livestock.
The other man had two red shoulders on his jumpsuit. He was also tall, but unlike Onyx, who was thin to the point of looking fragile, this man was muscled like a decathlon athlete, lean and hard. An all-purpose build, equally fast, strong, and flexible, and the way he stood told me he had good balance. Onyx I could fold in half like paper. That man would dodge a fast punch and come back swinging.
He was probably close to forty, but it was hard to tell. His hair, a deep brown, umber shade, was cut just long enough to style, although he hadn’t bothered. No gray yet. He had probably started his day clean-shaven this morning, but now a five o’clock shadow darkened his square jaw. A tall forehead, prominent nose, full mouth, and dark green eyes under thick eyebrows. Not a conventionally handsome face, but a powerful one. The kind of face that would make you rethink your strategy.
The green eyes took my measure. He had an unsettling, direct gaze, as if he were looking at something specific inside you. Barrett Shaw. In the flesh.
I stared back, trying to look blank. Look all you want. There is nothing to see here.
Jushur’s son stood to the side at parade rest, his undead sitting by him.