Scorpica by G.R. Macallister

Author:G.R. Macallister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21 THE TAKERS

In the streets of the Bastion The Shade, Jehenit

The woman in the high-collared cloak knew a warrior when she saw one, even in disguise, and here were two. She knew how warriors held themselves, how they moved through the world. Heads up straight as if drawn on a string. A ready bounce to their knees. Most importantly, blades strapped to their left hips, at the ideal angle for a swift right-handed draw. In this case the blades were broad, flat daggers, mostly concealed by the folds of the women’s long, swinging tunics, which were topped off with dark capes, hoods thrown back. The capes looked Arcan, but these were no Arcans. That they were pretending to be made something in her head vibrate like a struck bell.

Many things about the Bastion had not changed, would never change. It had simply always been. There were no stories of its creation, nothing that explained its massive, complex bulk; it was too large to exist and yet here it was. Leagues upon leagues of dark gray stone, forming an impenetrable border between Scorpica and Paxim, running from Godsbones to the shores of the Salt Maw. Outside, there were thick, curving walls, towers, gates, roads, all made of that same stone, the color of thunderclouds but far more solid. Inside, guard rooms and classrooms, nurseries and palace chambers, dormitories and meeting halls, untold levels extending deep down into the earth. There was life within, teeming life, but no green.

It was that teeming life that had changed. As the woman in the high-collared cloak strolled down the stone paths of the Bastion’s main market, she could clearly see the difference from a few years before. Fewer tables and stalls, fewer goods, fewer people. The people, too, had changed. She saw men ranging from white-haired to too young to grow whiskers, but the few women doing business in the market were well past their childbearing years. The stranger remarked on this casually, as if she didn’t understand why it might be so, to a woman with flashing eyes stooped behind a fruit cart. For the price of a half-dozen figs, she had all her suspicions confirmed.

First the Bastion had hidden away their girls, which was a simple matter, since all their children were already raised in nurseries until the age of eight. But as the Drought of Girls wore on, the woman whispered, the ruling board had brought a large swath of its adult women behind closed doors as well, salting them away like coin. It was not hard to guess why. When the Drought ended, if it ended, those women would bear the next generation, boys and girls alike, to produce all the generations to come.

Which made these warriors disguised as magicians stand out all the more, when she spotted them. They were the wrong age. Where her face was sun-touched, marked with lines of experience and knowledge, theirs were smooth. When they paused at a cart, she paused a few carts

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