That's right. This is so early in the process I haven't decided on a name for this beast yet. I've written the spine of the story so far and it's probably going to cap out at 6/7 books. Screw it. Let's have fun and write it anyway.
The whole purpose of this project? Write an epic fantasy character-driven story with inspiration from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Throne of Glass, and several other epic series that make me want to try my hand at character-driven storytelling. I'm typically more thematic and atmospheric so this is going to challenge me in big ways to do something different. In the spirit of bravery, catch Chapter 1 in all it's rough-draft glory below.
Chapter 1: Whisper
Nobody ever tells you what happens after you save the world. If someone had, maybe eight-year-old Elara Tartenna would have left the Tempest Gate open and let it burn. She had not, unfortunately, and it changed nothing. The Gate closed, but the wars raged on and over the course of sixteen years she had lost her family, her kingdom, and the life she was delusional enough to believe she was supposed to have. Now, the world thought Elara Tartenna had died when she closed the Gate. As far as Keelie Sharp was concerned? She did.
Keelie knew one thing better than most people at the ripe old age of twenty-four--she knew how to listen. Hood high to cover the distinct silver-blonde hair she kept tightly plaited down her back, she leaned on her forearms and listened. The stew in front of her steamed, bread broken in her hands paused on its journey from bowl to mouth. All her focus lingered on the figure in the other chair, back to her.
“You know how he is. Selling out his own uncle so he can inch closer to the seat of power,” the man spoke too loud, too drunk, and threw an arm across the empty seat beside him. “Finch will do what he always does. He’s a rat bastard, he’ll be at the Pits and make it look like he had no idea what’s been done.”
It was what she needed to hear. She dug into one of several pouches belted around her waist and left a coin on the table, striding for the back door. Darkness had become the nature of her, the night opened its arms to welcome her out. Black cloak over a black tunic and a dark vest. Gray wool pants tucked into calf-high boots that ended at her knees. Her work tended to be nocturnal, so that was what she had become. Save for the blasted silvery hair that only ever came out when the moon was full, anyway. She should dye it again, she knew that, but it washed out her already too-pale skin and made her look like a ghost. In her line of work, ghosts stuck out.
Finch was a bastard, the man spoke true. A dumb bastard, but still one all the same. The dumb ones died same as the smart ones--with one of her longknives in their throat. She adjusted her sleeves, bracers snagging the fabric, and checked the hold on her bandolier. Everything orderly, everything sharp. That was how she liked it.
She had no plan for him, not yet. It would come to her while she walked the streets of the Dawn Empire’s illustrious capital Hoardann, pinnacle of civilization. The shining city of the shining Empire that swallowed the continent by inches. Eroding the nations it called allies, bleeding their wealth dry, and leaving them withered in its wake. To know Hoardann, was to love it and hate it. Usually the latter a little more.
She stayed out of the wealthy neighborhoods, preferring to catch her quarry when it dared to venture into the slums she called home. Buildings cramped against each other, bending inward on shaky foundations over cobbled streets that had seen better days. Shouts from amber glowing windows, men stumbling from taverns half removed and half of their own accord. She moved without a sound around the teeming life of the darkest parts of the city. Women discretely watching for customers lingered in doorways that smelled like jasmine and rose to mask the opium smoke. Weathered-faced men exchanged whispered words and bags whose contents she would rather not ask about. A cat stepped into her path and she danced over it without losing her pace.
She knew what she sought in these stinking, crumbling alleys. Knew it too well from her time in Hoardann. The last seventeen years of her life had been spent here, found and trained and tested against everything the city had to offer. Trained to fight and survive, watch the movements of people, read unspoken thoughts in every furtive glance. Trained to listen.
The Pit was always heard before it was seen. Shouting, cheering. Not the good kind. Men came in droves to this cesspool, women followed in hopes of making or taking good coin. The briny scent of the River Maga washed away the human stench of the alley thanks to a well-timed breeze. The rickety docks stretched into the river, lit by dull lanterns in a feeble effort to make all of the slapdash boats feel watched over as they bobbed in the harbor. It was already drizzling when she reached the Pit. It was always drizzling. That was the worst part about this place--everything was damp. Nobody bothered to dry anymore.
The building stood several floors tall and long, the only one on the block that looked to be marginally stable. The only one that made any real money, thanks to the fighting pits it pretended not to have buried inside. Its owner, a skeletal man she had only met once, called it “hiding in plain sight”. Keelie called it “idiocy”. They had exchanged a few fist-based words about it before she was banned for a month.
She stared at the heavy wooden doors that did nothing to dampen the sound. The brilliant light dancing in the blown glass windows, flickering as the shadows of spectators drifted around tables and bars. Breathing deep, she stepped up and pushed. The noise hit her like a wall and she flinched, trying to make herself small. She slipped across the back wall as far as she could go before a worn wooden bar forced her to either order a drink or walk with too much purpose for a place like this.
Hood still up, she flagged the bartender, “Whatever’s tapped and cheap.”
He grunted, eyeing her, before turning to pour her a glass of something that foamed too much. He knew better than to ask anyone who went to that much trouble to hide their face many questions. She was known here, to her great misfortune. It was likely this would be traced back to her, yes. By the time they had, she was sure it wouldn’t matter and nothing would come out of it. She turned and crossed one booted ankle over the other, leaning back against the bar, and scanned the upper viewing area.
It was two stories only, the rest reserved for the illegal brothel and gambling houses disguised as tenant properties. At the center of a square of boardwalks lined with railings threatening to collapse from the crowd, a square pit was sunken several yards into the ground. The tunnels at the back were the only way in or out. There were five of these pits built into the foundation. Five squares filled with two men each who paid or were paid good money to brawl. Sometimes it was less clear how willing each fighter was.
Sometimes, she remembered with a familiar ache in her shoulder, it was a fighter who was foolish enough to think herself capable of a noble deed. She pushed the thought out and rolled her shoulders. She sipped and grimaced, half tempted to cause a scene over the audacity they had to serve something so grotesque. Cheering erupted and she used the moment to lean forward and scan anyone who stood around this pit.
No sign of Finch, but she could feel him. Sense him in this place. It was her gift from Oisha, the Guild Master said. Her ability to sense things if she focused, sense people more easily. Magic? No, they would not dare utter the possibility it was magic. Not in these times where it was becoming increasingly dangerous to engage in that nasty business. She had fought the urge to spit on Oisha’s name back then. Young enough to be taken and taught, old enough to remember this was not where she was supposed to be. Not even a little. Another life she shook off with a shrug and continued her scouting around the space. Slow, unhurried steps. Weaving through the ebbing and flowing tide of the crowd, dodging a waitress with a too-full tray and ducking under the wide-thrown arm of a patron deep in his cups.
It was the third pit where she found her mark. The young nephew she had been told in no uncertain terms to dispense with. The weak link in the family chain. A child who fancied himself a schemer against the master of scheming himself. The boy was a fool. Finch sat with a glass of something cherry red and expensive in his hand, leaning against a balustrade with a concubine on his lap. Also expensive, from the look of her. His dark hair too short, his nose too flat, his eyes too beady. It irritated Keelie to look at a man and know on appearances alone that he was a slimy, miserable thing. She would not feel an ounce of remorse for this.
So she sat and she watched and she tracked and she waited. Most importantly, she listened.
“Their tab’s getting awfully high,” the barmaid who had been running trays up and down muttered. “Last time he did this, he stumbled out and we had to call in the account to his uncle.”
“Filch?” Both women laughed quietly at the mocking nickname, “Fancies himself the heir of Tobin’s secret empire. Wouldn’t shock me if he was dumb enough to try and take it.”
Then what Keelie knew would not shock this woman, indeed. Finch had made a mistake. A series of them, actually. He had decided he was tired of playing the libertine to his underworld-myth of an uncle. The man was hard as nails, vicious as sea dragon, and ruthless as the death-god Haln himself. She should know. Tobin was her Guild Master, after all.
His idiot of a nephew had wanted more. Gorged himself on a cushioned lifestyle and decided he was now hungry for power. That was his first mistake. The second was believing anyone in that den of vipers was his friend and ally. An unofficial Guild, they were. Bound by loyalty, money, and a healthy fear of the man in charge. Tobin, unfortunately for all but himself, possessed a formidable amount of fire affinity. He was Katur-touched, so they liked to say. He was very strong and very good at wielding what he had been given. He was also very, very good at hiding it until it was too late to do anything about it.
If you called it a god-touch, you could skirt the technicalities about calling it magic. That’s what most people did to avoid getting pinched by the Black Guard, those secret police the Dawn Emperor had patrolling every street in his empire who were more than happy to make examples out of the gifted who failed to report and be registered. She shuddered at the thought of the last example making she had accidentally passed by.
Finch, that was her priority. Not the Black Guard and certainly not magic.
Keelie stared up at the man too old to be pulling this shit and made her plan up in her head. She was typically better than that, but Finch was a dumb bastard and she didn’t feel like it would take too much to handle him. When one of the barmaids began filling a tray with drinks, the other made an irritated sound.
“Again?”
“Just ready the runner to go find his uncle again,” one sighed, annoyed, and turned her back.
With a pass of her hand and a twitch of her fingers--quick as a blink--Keelie unstoppered and dropped an equally mean-looking liquid into the glass of something cherry red and expensive. She made the maneuver look like she was turning back to stare down at the bar and into her glass of what was really just tangy water pretending to be ale. She kept her eyes in shadow and waited.
The barmaid said something innocuous, gathered her tray, and headed for the stairs. Keelie turned her head slightly and took in the sounds of the crowd. Jeering, angry bets being fulfilled, some crooning too-young woman insisting a man too old and too drunk could afford it. She did her best to pretend she didn’t know what he could potentially afford. Being an assassin--a Whisper, as Tobin loved to call them as if it made what they did not the exact same thing--was not as exciting as she had been led to believe as a child. Yes, there were the knives and the acrobatics and the disguises and the coded languages, but mostly it was just a lot of sitting around and waiting.
She timed it in breaths, how long she would have before it would be best to pack it up and leave. Each one passed, each sound becoming a dull buzz in her ear. It was like being underwater, tossed around by a river, unable to hear anything but the roar of static and silence in her head.
Finally, a scream.
It cut through the buzz and the water and snapped her attention along with the other patrons who knew a death scream when they heard one. Which, frankly, was far too many for one building. She glanced up and saw her mark--slumped over the railing, red foam falling from his pale lips with a sickening plop onto the floor below. He was twitching and spasming, would be for a while if the dose of gadras poison she had been forced to estimate was correct.
Keelie took advantage of the momentary pause, then the subsequent chaotic shouting. She pulled off her cloak and tugged her hair free, screaming and pushing with the flow of the crowd like the rest of them. They mobbed towards the front door and she was so immersed in her act of panic that it almost felt real for a moment. The crowd spilled out onto the street into the dark, heading for the Avenue Provence as if the main street in the worst part of the city would offer them any safety. The guards that patrolled it were mostly decorative this far down.
She ran and shoved and surged and eventually, slipped quietly off down an alley and slowed her pace to a leisurely walk. She sighed and raked her hands through now-tangled hair, irked at how much time she’d spent brushing it that morning. A shadow fell in beside her, swallowing the light. The only sign it was a person was the burning end of a hand rolled cigarette on the inhale and a tendril of earthy smoke on the exhale.
She coughed theatrically and waved it away, “That’s a horrible habit, Whis.”
The figure shrugged and light caught its face. A man, older than her by a decade with a battlescarred face and too much gray threading the black at his temples to be nowhere close to forty yet. He was wiry and lithe, like most of them in this line of work. It didn’t do well to be a barrel chested bruiser when you were trying to kill people with subtlety.
“Yeah, well, don’t tell my mum will you,” he flicked the butt away knowing full well his mum was dead. All of their parents were, it was practically a prerequisite for depressing, murderous work, “You get it done?”
“You think a mob of people just decided to run out of the Pit screaming?” She hastily plaited her hair again and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. He was looking at her with a raised brow, she could see it even in the dark, “If you walk into someplace with your hood up acting mysterious, then someone dies, do you think it’s best to keep looking mysterious with your hood up when you leave?” He shrugged, “Thought not.”
They walked in companionable silence for a while. Whistler was less of an active taker of lives nowadays and more of a master of espionage. If someone made it ten years in the trenches, Tobin tended to find a better use for them. Recently, his empire had been expanding into rudimentary spycraft she suspected had to do with a natural inclination to grab for power that seemed to run in his family.
“Boss wants to see you tomorrow night,” Whistler said in his reedy voice. He had so many now that Keelie wondered occasionally if that was the real one or if he’d forgotten what his real one sounded like, “I’ll tell him it’s a success. Give the man the evening to mourn. But you’re back out on something big, Keels.”
She sighed heavily and held out her hand. The pouch appeared without so much as a perceptible movement of his hand and she weighed it, calculating in her head. It was almost double what Tobin had said she would make for this. She frowned, “He feeling generous?”
It was not a good thing when the boss felt generous.
“Nah,” he struck a match along the wall and lit another cigarette, “Finch was up to worse than he thought. Decided to add a bit’a weight to match the recalculated value of the target.”
She hummed and pocketed the coins, then reached out to pluck the smoke from his fingers. She took a long drag and grimaced, hating the smoke as much as she hated herself for indulging the habit, “What’s the job tomorrow? Or are you solemnly sworn to secrecy?”
He shrugged and exhaled, “Don’t know the details. Just know you’re involved. Something about a lovely field trip to the castle, I hear.”
Keelie froze, a chill settling into her blood. She repeated dumbly, “The Labyrinth Castle?”
Whistler took two or three steps that felt a lot like skipping to her, then turned with a far more theatrical shrug that betrayed he knew significantly more than he was ever going to tell her, “And Finn’s going, too.”
She groaned and threw her hands in the air, “Of course he is. Finn. Spectacular. Keelie, please kill my nephew. Keelie, please spend more time with the worst man in the Guild in the worst place in the city for one of the Whispers to go--let alone two.”
Whistler laughed, musical in a way that chilled the bones of anyone who didn’t know him well. She lengthened her strides and caught up with him, annoyed, and unwilling to hide it. Whatever this mysterious job was, there was no way in all of the hells that she was going to agree to that. Haln himself could step across the Veiled Sea and tell her she had to do it and she would still not agree. She and Finneas didn’t do jobs together anymore for a reason and the reason was Finneas.
**
“No,” Keelie folded her arms. She was slouched in a fine velvet chair in a fine velvet room in a fine velvet house in the Gilded Quarter.
Tobin’s house, borrowing from the “in plain sight” mantra of the Pit’s owner. Ever the mask covering his true line of work, Tobin played the successful merchant-lord who had hit the ceiling of his power without a family House. It made a wonderful alibi for what he really did and explained the regular comings and goings of all manner of person in his home. Their home, really. Base, Whistler called it.
Tobin sighed, exasperated, and ran a hand across his brow. He was a handsome man, by all accounts. Tall, well-built with hair that had gone silver-gray in his twenties and become a bit of a trademark for him. He retained the boyish youth in his face, tempered by time and an impeccably maintained silver beard. He looked at her with melancholy, honey-brown eyes and a reprimanding frown.
“Keelie,” he said, voice a firm and deep baritone, “nobody else can do this.”
“Of course nobody else can do this, nobody else is me.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder for emphasis, “Whatever it is, I’m not doing it with him.”
She jammed a finger in the direction of the young man, a year her senior and cocky as hell. His thoughtful frown and handsome face weren’t fooling her. She could see through the short ash-brown hair and soulful dark eyes, all the accoutrements of a young man with a noble calling who took a wrong turn and ended up in the Whisper Guild.
He leaned against the far wall, arms folded over a blue wrapped tunic secured with the dark leather belt of a shortsword. He balanced the heel of one dark boot against the wall, the other kept long. Finn sighed and ran a gloved hand through his hair, tousling it in a way that somehow made him more irritating and handsome at the same time. Women tended to fawn over Finn, which he pretended to hate as much as he pretended to be humble. Keelie hated him.
“It’s not a matter of whether or not you want to, my darling girl,” Tobin unstoppered a crystal decanter and poured himself a drink. He thought better of it, and poured one for her, too. She accepted the bribe with a glower, “I need information and Finn can get it for me. I need Finn protected and you can protect him for me.”
“How does it feel to know you’re going to play fetch while I watch over you, Finnsy?” Keelie fired off a sharp smirk at him. He rolled his eyes, but wouldn’t dignify her with a response, “I hate this and I don’t want to go.”
“I know you don’t, beloved pain in my ass,” Tobin patted her shoulder. She would go. They all knew it. She just wouldn’t go without a fight.
“Whistler said it involved the castle,” she frowned, grim. “I really, really don’t want to go to the castle. Especially not with that pompous ass.”
“Right, I’m the pompous, arrogant one,” Finn finally spoke and pushed away from the wall. He dropped into the seat across from her, face serious, “Can you ever take this work seriously, Keelie? Just once in your life, can we pretend that we are affected by what we do?”
She scoffed and took a long drink, waving Tobin on. Only she could get away with such an affectation. Tobin loved her, she was essentially his adopted daughter. She was also the best weapon he had. People rarely suspected a beautiful woman had the ability to cut their throat in an alley or poison their drink in a bar. They expected her to wind up more in Saskia’s line of work.
The woman opened the ornate wooden door and peered around it, beaming at Finn. Her seaglass eyes settled on Keelie and her expression soured, “I thought I smelled piss. Hello, Keelie.”
Her smile curved like a scimitar, sharp and perfect. Everything about Saskia was perfect. Her stunning face, her perfectly shaped figure, her wavy black hair. She was an absolute beauty and the crown of Tobin’s brothel empire. Men and women paid by the pound for a night with his favorite concubine and he gladly charged it. She and Keelie had been found at about the same time, but Keelie ended up under Tobin’s wing while he sent Saskia to Madam Artois. Keelie killed, Saskia moaned. They, too, hated each other.
“Funny, I thought I smelled opium. Lovely to see you, Sas,” Keelie raised her glass to the woman and was pointedly ignored.
“The dressmaker dropped off your parcels,” Saskia directed her statement to Tobin. “The final fitting will have to be tonight so when you’re done with her, I’ll take her up.”
“Her is capable of speaking,” Keelie frowned now. She looked between the two of them, then at Finn, “What’s going on? I love a new dress and all, but this feels like an awful lot of people to put me in a gown.”
Tobin sighed and sat down in the only remaining chair. He pinched his nose and finished his drink. Saskia slipped away and shut the door behind her, ever the emotionally attuned lady, “You’re going to participate in the Argunfell Games and get Finneas access to the castle. He’s going to do some fact-finding for me while all the lovely lords and ladies of the realm are gathered in one place. Your only job is to do your best without exposing either of you and keep Finn from trouble.”
“What?!” She half spit out her drink and hissed at the residual burn in her throat, “Are you serious?” She looked frantically at Finn, “Is he serious?”
“As a summer day,” Finn sighed. “Papers are already forged. Congratulations on qualifying with flying colors, by the way. Everything’s been worked out for months, we just needed the final approval before bringing you in.”
Keelie sneered at him, then at Tobin, “There’s not a better way to do any of this? I feel like we could come up with several plans to get this information you’re so worried about without involving me. Send him in as a serf or a stable boy! Let him get kicked around by a few of the royal horses, it’ll build character!”
Tobin was already shaking his head, “Someone needs to be able to converse with the Houses in ways I cannot. It’s rare they gather like this in one place so I’m seizing a moment. You and Finn look the most passable for nobility from the bunch, so it’s you two going in.”
Something passed between them. A knowing look that reminded her he knew all too well why she would pass just fine in Hoardann’s central court. Finn just happened to avoid any work that wound up with a scar on his pretty face or a broken nose. Maybe if she changed that, she could get out of this. As if he could read her mind, Finn made a disgusted sound and threw up his hands.
“Why don’t I go in alone and fish up your information?” She bargained, “I can tease it out of them over two weeks. I can get anyone to tell me anything. I learned from the best, remember?”
“You have the spycrafting ability of an ox and you are quite possibly the least charming person I have ever met,” Finn spat.
She leaned forward and pointed at him with her now empty glass, “Only with you. I’m the most charming person with everyone else-”
“You can’t even charm your shoes on in the morning-”
“I will charm that look right off your f-”
“Enough!” Tobin shouted with a finality that shut them both up. Not without an exchange of withering glares, though. “Oisha forgive me for this horrible mistake I am making. I need you both to find a way to work together and get this done. It’s two weeks. Keelie, go participate in the Games and enjoy yourself. Win, even. You can keep the whole purse if you do. Finn, do your job and get me my intelligence and I’ll forgive the last of your debt. Fair?”
Finn blinked at him, stunned. The last of his debt. Keelie stared, too. This was how Tobin kept them all. He invested in every Whisper he brought on, so he expected that investment to pay him back. He kept meticulous ledgers of what every single Whisper owed him and allowed them to cash out or repay every time they finished a job. Keelie had no intention of leaving this life, not when Tobin made it clear she was his heir-apparent. All of her earnings had gone right into her bank account and subsequently into her rather elevated tastes.
She liked nice things, sue her.
Finneas Asper, though. He was a completely different kind of animal. She didn’t know how he’d ended up in the Guild, nobody really did. He had the stick-up-his-ass morality of a noble-born fop and took everything so seriously. He offered prayer candles at all of the altars to Haln and Emrillen after every job and, she suspected, twice on Altarday. Every kill came with a plea for forgiveness and he never took jobs that ended the life of someone who didn’t have an existing criminal background. It was insufferable how painfully moralistic he was.
He had put every piece of his earnings to pay back his debts. The debts were, of course, nearly insurmountable. Designed to be. It was more likely to achieve a lordship than to pay off Tobin Parnel, still Finn tried. Now, on a silver platter, was his freedom.
Keelie was staring at him, the haughty irritation fell away for a moment and she looked at him with genuine hope. Finn wasn’t made for their world. Her loathing aside, she felt a flicker of elation for him at the sound of his freedom. She could see him joining the Brothers of Death, the servants of Haln tucked deep in the mountain monastery in the Ubron Peaks to the north.
She blinked away her surprise and the mask slid back on, “What if I don’t win, though? Finn gets to run free and I get the satisfaction of placing, what, third?”
“You’ll win,” Tobin waved her off, but his focus was entirely on Finn. “Acceptable terms, then?”
Finn nodded, mute. If he spoke, he feared the offer would vanish before he had time to enjoy it. Keelie grumbled her annoyance, “Fine. Accepted. Now,” she clapped her hand against her empty glass, “I believe I was promised dresses?”
