Conflagration
937 A.O.P.
One
SOREN
Soren was certain he’d hear the sounds of telegraph machines in his sleep for years to come.
The building he’d worked out of ever since returning to the Warden’s Island from Glencoe in Thirteenth Month of last year had once been a warehouse used for storage. After the attack on the Warden’s Island last summer, they’d repurposed it for what salvaged telegraph machines were found in other buildings and those that were shipped to them from Solaria or E’ridia.
It didn’t have the best insulation, and the high roof meant the sound from the ranks of telegraph machines stretching from wall to wall echoed loudly. At the far end of the building was a large analytical machine that helped coordinate which telegraph got which incoming message.
The setup wasn’t as elaborate or as entrenched as it once had been before the original administrative building was destroyed by Daijal forces. But it worked, and wardens made do with what they had. So far, it was holding up to the heavy influx of messages coming from the borders and the battlefields where wardens were assigned.
Shifts were nine hours each, with the telegraph machines needing to be manned for three shifts a day. Soren had been assigned the mid-shift, which meant he didn’t have to disrupt his sleeping hours, but the bulk of messages came in during that time. He’d gotten good at transcribing the coded clicks and beeps into the trade tongue wardens used, his recordings clean and precise. When a message was received and documented, he returned his own confirmation and then waited for the next one to come through.
It was tedious work that required focus, for which he was grateful. Given half a chance, Soren would spend every day since leaving Solaria thinking about the man whose heart he’d inadvertently broken.
Vanya Sa’Liandel, of the House of Sa’Liandel, was the Imperial emperor of Solaria and had once been Soren’s longtime lover ever since he’d saved Vanya’s life from a train wreck. These days, Vanya was an ache in Soren’s chest and painful memories he couldn’t let go of the same way he couldn’t let go of the vow that still hung around his throat.
He was pulled from his thoughts by someone clearing their throat beside his desk. Soren looked up from the pages he’d been sorting to see a tithe standing next to his desk, wearing a brass pin that marked her as on messenger duty. The girl couldn’t have been more than ten years old, but Soren knew she was probably one of only a dozen or so in her year group who had survived the attack last year. The Daijal forces had known where to target to do the most damage due to a warden turning traitor and feeding them information as well as prisoners.
The school and training buildings had been targeted first, along with the civic buildings. Both were critical infrastructure, and while buildings could be easily rebuilt, the ranks of tithes and wardens with specialized knowledge could not. Daijal had eradicated the next few generations of wardens, to say nothing of the archives that had once held records of alchemic information of the poison fields dating back to the Age of Starfall, before the current countries even existed. So much had been lost, and they were losing even more wardens to the war between Daijal and Ashion.
“The governor wants to see you,” the tithe said.
Soren nodded and hit the button on the telegraph machine that would turn it off. He gathered his reports and placed them in the outgoing tray for pickup. They would be taken to a different building and entered into proper record-keeping ledgers, organized between border updates or pertaining to the war, and passed on to those who needed to know. Soren left his desk behind, the tithe enough of a reason for him to end his shift early. He followed her out of the building into a steady rain that was typical of weather during Fifth Month.
The wind accompanying the rain wasn’t poisonous enough to merit a gas mask for wardens. Soren ducked his head against the rain as he jogged after the tithe across the grassy open space situated between the telegraph building and the one that now held the administrative offices after the original one was destroyed. The interior of the fort was still recovering from the attack last summer, and rebuilding all the damaged areas was slow going, even with aid provided by Solaria and E’ridia.
They reached the administrative building—previously used as barracks but no longer needed, not with the drastic decline in tithes—and he knocked his boots against the porch step to get some of the mud off his soles. The tithe left him to it and disappeared inside. Once his boots were clean enough, Soren stepped inside and nodded at the wardens manning the desks there. Only one nodded back, the other two wardens bent over their work as they sorted through paper and ledgers.
“Head on down. She’s expecting you,” the warden said.
The walk to the governor’s office was a route Soren could do with his eyes closed. The building had been gutted in places to open up space for wardens to work in, and he passed quite a few going about their duties. The layout was temporary, at least until the new administrative building was finished. Most of the wardens who could have helped with the construction were on border patrol in other countries or fighting in the poison fields alongside the Ashion army—two places where Soren wished he could be but was denied.
Ever since Soren’s arrival in Glencoe after the attack on the Warden’s Island and the destruction of the Imperial palace in Calhames last year, Delani had refused to assign him a border. It had as much to do with the miscalculation of his efforts in Solaria and the Imperial court as it did with the realization that Soren may very well be someone who should have never become a warden at all. As much as he wanted to be off the island and fighting with his brethren, to be a warden meant abiding by the governor’s orders. Delani had refused to let him leave the Warden’s Island once they returned, and so here Soren remained.
What Soren wanted—desperately, perhaps selfishly—was his border in Solaria back. But that was lost to him, as much as Vanya was as well. Even these many months after that ugly, wretched night trapped by revenants in the Imperial palace and the one after when he’d last felt Vanya’s touch, Soren still ached for the other man. The vow hanging from his throat was a reminder of what he’d lost, but Soren still couldn’t find it in himself to give it up, to send it back, not when it was the last feasible connection he had to Vanya.
Even if he could return to Solaria, he knew Vanya wouldn’t want to see him, much less forgive Soren for lying about being able to cast starfire. No matter that his secret had saved Raiah’s life—it had irrevocably damaged the trust between Vanya and Soren. After all the betrayal Vanya had suffered, Soren had made it so much worse by hiding a past he had never claimed but which others had bestowed upon him.
As for starfire, even now, Soren was loath to ever cast it again. That power was anathema to being a warden, and this life was the only one he knew. He wasn’t ready to give it up for a different road.
Soren let those melancholy thoughts slide away once he made it to Delani’s office. He could see her door was propped open, and he had to edge his way past pushed-together desks filled with wardens and tithes working on filing reports and filtering vital information for the governor to review. Soren had spent his own fair share of duty at those desks before getting assigned to the telegraph building.
He reached the doorway and knocked on the frame, waiting until Delani looked up from the half dozen reports scattered across her desk before stepping inside. “You wanted to see me?”
The governor leaned back in her chair, a creaking sound coming from the motion. “Close the door and take a seat.”
Soren did as ordered before sitting in one of the wooden chairs in front of her desk. He leaned back, rolling his shoulders a little as the sheath holding his poison short sword pulled at them. No warden went weaponless in the fort these days, when before, those wardens who returned for a respite from their border patrol didn’t mind leaving their weapons in the barracks.
Delani studied him with her one good eye, the other a pitch-black prosthetic painted with gold flecks to look like the night sky. The monocle goggle that helped with her depth perception was strapped securely around her head. Her short, dark hair sported more white these days. Signs of stress were in everyone, but they didn’t have the luxury to succumb to it.
“You’re aware of the doubling of revenant numbers in Daijal and Ashion since winter, correct?” Delani said.
“Every warden is,” Soren said.
