Children of Neviah

“A song to sing

A question to ask

Each a purpose

Each a task.”

Harbor was pretty damn sure that he’d done nothing to deserve this. True, he’d never been the most honest of men. He never claimed to be one; it was their fault for trusting him, really. Could hardly blame them. Everyone knew of his charming disposition and the unsuspicious dimples in his cheeks.

But he knew his demographic. He knew the displeased businessmen made up of one part stoutness and two parts short-temper. He handled them with sweet and guarded words and honest and underhanded promises.

When that tactic failed, as it often did, he dealt with their lackeys in less diplomatic ways. They always sent scraggly teenagers after him, poor excuses for mercenaries that should’ve put their energy into more successful endeavors. Like farming, for example. Or the military. At least they would’ve died with some semblance of honor. It was the price his customers paid for being cheap and North Family Banking only worked with cheap businessmen.

After all, what respectable merchant came to an off-the-books bank for a loan?

Paid kidnappers— sorry, competent paid kidnappers— were far beyond the price range of any of his clientele. And if he’d finally been caught in his web of lies, then the Shadows would’ve just hung him in his hometown like any other petty criminal. Not that he knew his hometown well, spending most of his time in the craggly slums of Naia. The onlookers would probably wonder who the stranger hanging from their platform was. Strangers often wondered that kind of thing.

An insignificant, petty conman like Harbor North was not worth this much time and effort. Of that, he was sure.

Fuck, he needed to piss.

He kicked out his leg blindly for what seemed like the millionth time, hoping for a hiss or a squeak or something to alert him to his sister’s presence. Again, his foot just hit the seat in front of him. He slammed his foot against it, his curiosity fading to frustration.

He settled back against the wall. He was in the back of a utility vehicle. He could tell from the hum of the engine and the gentle rocking of the vehicle around him. He rode in one a long time ago before he needed his questionable occupation. It wasn’t something a lower class boy easily forgot.

But he never managed to remember why he got in the vehicle in the first place.

He wanted to call out to Kore, hear her reassuring voice. She was always with him. They were always together. It’s how they survived. And why would they take him, but not her, his accomplice, his partner in crime?

But he stayed silent. The last words to exit his mouth earned him a punch in the gut, so he sat in the darkness in silence. A million questions flitted in front of the blackness of his vision. Where was he going? Who sent these people? Where was Kore? And most importantly: What had he done to deserve this?

With his limited mobility, he pulled his legs up to his chest and flopped over. It seemed to be the most comfortable way to sleep during this long, tedious drive. How long had he been back here? Had anyone seen him through the back windows? Did anyone care?

Probably not. He knew the answer to his final question because he knew human nature. People only cared about themselves and their kin, and even that was debatable. “’Ey, get up, worm,” a thick, gravelly voice said and Harbor jolted upright.

His ears rang from the unexpected shout, the first non-mechanical sound he’d heard since he woke up with his eyes covered and his limbs bound. “Shh,” a light and airy voice hissed, the sound like the rush of running water. “Don’t talk to the cargo, Aalto.”

“I’m bored, Mae,” the other voice, Aalto, whined, not unlike a small child. “Why can’t we at least talk with each other?”

His voice tripped over the formal language, thick against his Orson accent. “Because we’re not supposed to,” Mae replied in the clipped tone of the high-born Sophronians. An odd pair.

They sounded far away, up at the front of the vehicle. Harbor quieted his breathing, attempting to hear a third kidnapper in the seat in front of him. Nothing. Not a single measly exhale. “Where are we going?” he ventured.

Silence followed and he wondered if they heard him. “Where are we going?” he asked, a bit louder than before.

“We ’eard you the first time, boy!” Aalto snapped.

“I’m twenty-four,” he responded, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“Boy…” Aalto growled as Harbor’s world jolted.

His skull bounced back against the glass with a sharp crack before the driving steadied out. His ears rang, head spinning as he tried to gain his bearings again. “Stop being so rough,” Mae said in the same soft tone Harbor used with the stray cats behind his apartment. His shoulders relaxed.

The vehicle slowed to a stop, followed by one of the doors opening. It slammed closed and a small squeak slipped from his lips. His heart thumped against his chest, slow and unsteady, as he waited for some kind of pain or punishment.

Seconds ticked by. Minutes. Again, he lost track of time as his head bobbed in a clumsy attempt to stay awake. Kore would stay awake. She never let her guard slip, especially with enemies so close. But, even as he drifted further and further from wakefulness, nothing happened.

He nearly succumbed when the door opened and closed again. “So?” Aalto said. He hadn’t moved.

“Go.”

They continued on, this time on much smoother roads. Paved, if Harbor had to guess. They were in a city, not the pitiful chunk of land called Aerdal. No public hanging then. He crossed that off of his list as he steepled his fingers together. A tire struck a pothole and he pressed his lips to his middle fingers. A quick, silent prayer. Lux, he hoped they still listened to him.

The vehicle shuddered and lunged, stopping and starting again and again in a slow attempt to move forward. Harbor strained to hear a whisper or a grumble from his captors, but they remained silent. Instead, he heard the jingle of carts and the shouts of people. He whipped around when a particularly loud noise whizzed past the window behind him. Somewhere, a buggy horn squealed and a dog barked.

He knew where they were.

Sophronia, the heart of Aislin, buzzed around him, cracking with the majikal energy of sixty million souls. He’d always been sensitive to the current of majik around him, but this was suffocating. It squeezed his lungs with a familiar grip, a tight hug from an old friend he didn’t recognize.

The vehicle turned and they picked up their former pace, slowing to gentle stops for seconds at a time, only to continue on.

Hours passed. At least, he thought it was hours. He leaned his head back against the glass again, his heart still racing. How did people live in a place crammed with so much majik? His ears hung on the jingle of a bracelet. An inhibitor. A particularly haughty client mentioned the necessity of them in Sophronia, but Kore always paid more attention to the gossip.

Again, his heart ached for his missing sister. Did they put her in another car to cut off communication between them? Were they going to the same place?

Sophronia. His heart skipped a beat. Only the worst criminals were dragged to the home of the notorious Prison of Atens. Prayer after prayer raced through his mind as the situation he was in finally settled in. This wasn’t a matter of life or death. This was a matter of life or captivity.

And Harbor refused to be a captive.

When the vehicle stopped again, the hum of the engine died and both of the front doors opened. He waited with bated breath as the door to the trunk clicked and opened. A rough hand latched onto his arm, yanking him out of the vehicle. His legs gave out underneath him, slapping against the searing hot concrete. Pain shot up his spine, warmth sliding down his thigh. Aalto sniggered above him.

“Aalto,” Mae hissed as a softer hand settled on his arm.

She jerked him up with a strength that startled a small gasp out of him. Her hand went up to the fabric around his eyes and blinding light flooded his vision as she tugged him forward. He stumbled after her when Aalto prodded him in the back. His eyes adjusted to the light agonizingly slow. He blinked and white light settled into the basics of shapes. He swung his head around, his vision still out of focus. Now or never.

He stopped and jerked his elbow out towards the figure at his side. His skin grazed the edge of fabric before Mae whirled him around and shoved him to the ground. Her breath flitted against his neck, the chill of her inhibitor bracelet sliding against his skin. “Try that again,” she murmured into his ear with a voice that didn’t match the edge of her words. “And I’ll break your arm.”

He nodded, his eyes focusing on the marble floor beneath his feet. Prisons didn’t have marble floors, did they? She yanked him to his feet and they continued their procession. The more his eyes adjusted, the more he saw of the ornate building around them. Guards lined the walls, in ceremonial armor that served no real purpose. Crystalline pillars bordered floor-to-ceiling windows. No one passed them, but the guards stared, their gazes hungry with curiosity.

His eyes turned to Mae. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but her beauty surpassed any other thoughts about her appearance. Her bubblegum pink hair cascaded down her back, unprofessional for a bounty hunter, but she didn’t seemed to mind. She knew these halls, he realized, but she didn’t belong in them.

Aalto, on the other hand, seemed to bumble down the hall with an unusual sense of confidence. As his voice suggested, he was large and bulky, but also unexpectedly handsome. He glared at Harbor out of the corner of his eye.

They approached a door, a large one made of majona wood, guarded by four soldiers on either side. It swung open and Harbor froze. His fear bled into terror, a cold panic that paralyzed him, numbing his fingers. Mae and Aalto each latched onto one of his arms and dragged him forward.

Harbor knew darkness. He knew five hundred different kinds of darkness and, when he had nothing better to do, he pondered them and counted them. The counting was the tedious part, a systematic filing of an abstract concept, but it kept him occupied during the slower moments of his life.

Five hundred different kinds of darkness. There was the complete absence of light, the kind of black he’d been thrown into for the last couple of days. Or the darkness of a person’s eyes when they realized they made a mistake. His dreams were darkness, an endless blank of nothingness and forgottens and sometimes, his memories followed the same line of emptiness. He loved the shadowy darkness of night, when the sky of Naia was overcast, the moons and stars obscured.

He feared none of them.

But this? This terrified him. Shadows plummeted into his veins and shifted against his eyes like wet gauze. His knees weakened, but his captors kept him upright.

Harbor cracked a smile as the chill of his sweat slid down his scorching skin. A nervous response to an unfamiliar— but this wasn’t unfamiliar, was it? He felt it before, once, in the emptiness of his mind— threat.

And he basked in the darkness of the man seated in front of him.

The man smiled, a crooked glint of one part teeth and two parts malice. “Hello, young Neviah.”

Harbor was pretty fucking sure that he’d done nothing to deserve this.