A dark foe. A forbidden love. A deadly, high-seas quest.
Mercenary sailor Jack's past comes back to haunt him when his crew receives a commission during the height of hurricane season. Charged with returning the all-too-familiar Prince Valory to the...
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Anaphean Borderlands The Season of Heat Fanán the 18; 2421
Foul air clung to the town like a pestilent blanket. The breeze had died some days earlier, leaving the inland provinces to suffer in sweltering, stagnant heat. A thick silence reigned. Even the animals had fled. Nothing moved but for a few wisps of smoke rising from smoldering ruins.
Valory bar Adrianth picked his way down a side street, sun beating down on his shoulders as he searched a row of houses for survivors. Fire had ravaged many of them. Walls were scorched, roofs caved in, and the smell – the smell alone would churn even the most hardened of stomachs. He had spent the morning with a kerchief tied around his nose and mouth, though it still took all of his willpower not to gag.
Approaching yet another fire-blackened doorway, he paused as his eyes fell upon a pair of nails driven into the frame. His boots traced patterns in ash as he moved about the stoop, fingers snagging on several more pairs of nails hammered into the other side. A frown tugged at his lips. He wondered whether, in his rush to clear through each of the houses, he had missed other such details. Then again, perhaps such details were no longer there. Most of the buildings suffered far worse fates than this one. Fire hadn't ravaged it as thoroughly as its neighbors.
Stepping inside the threshold, he froze as his eyes fell upon the twisted corpses that lay before him. Taking a long, slow breath, he swallowed down the rush of nauseous horror that assailed him. These weren't the first bodies he had encountered that morning, nor would they be the last.
A second look revealed that the house once had four occupants: a small family. They lay huddled together on the floor where they had retreated when the smoke became too thick to bear. Forcing himself to think critically, Valory paced a circle around the bodies, examining their positions before returning to the front door. From what he had seen that morning, the majority of the townspeople had perished in bed, unaware of the attack unfolding around them. The rest, however, he always encountered in the front room. At first he had assumed that they awoke during the attack and perished before they could escape their dwellings. The scene in this house gave him pause. There was no reason, after all, why they would have had time to huddle together in such a manner, yet not enough time to cross the threshold into open air.
Unless, of course, a bar had been nailed across their door, preventing them from making an escape. Valory grit his teeth. The fire was premeditated: of that he had no doubt.
The crunch of charcoal beneath booted feet sent Valory whirling, sword half out of his scabbard by the time he faced the hulking man ducking into the room beside him. He relaxed at the sight of Little's familiar form.
"Been looking for you for ages," Little boomed. "What are you—" He broke off at the sight of the bodies on the floor, ruddy face going ashen. A shaky hand pressed two fingers to his brow.
Valory echoed the gesture, a whispered prayer passing through his lips. He brushed past Little, squeezing through the door and over the stoop to the street where he stopped, swallowing against the tightness in his chest. Head tipped back, he stared unseeing up at the cloudless sky.
