A Promise of Iron Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Brandon McCoy

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2020

  www.realmccoybooks.com

  There are so many people to thank that have helped me along this journey….

  you all can thank Leanna for demanding a longer thank you page.

  To Aubree

  For all the bedtime story inspiration, I gift to you an entire world.

  To Shayne

  Thank you for your encouragement, your laugh,

  and your constant reminder that I had a book to finish.

  To my guides, Carrie and Celia

  Thank you for making an amateur feel like they

  had something to share with the world.

  And finally, to Leanna

  You who have always seen the worth of my salt.

  Without you this would be but empty pages.

  Prologue

  There was a knock at the door: rap, rap, rap.

  “Enter,” a voice called from behind a desk cluttered with stacks of time-worn paper.

  The metal door slid open with a whoosh. A tall man dressed in uniform gray stepped in from the corridor. His hands were full, and though he was not labored with his cargo, he did not seem eager to linger with it in his arms.

  The man looked over the desk and the stacks of paper that surrounded the woman like a palisade. Such a scene might have been common a century ago when trees were plentiful, and the sky was still clear and blue. Now it was as much a symbol of failure as it was excess. Her hands moved delicately, conscious of fragility as she dismantled one pile, only to form two others.

  “Here’s fine, Daniel,” the voice said as she carefully made space on the opposite end of her desk. She wore a smile, the eager smile that accompanies a long-anticipated gift.

  Daniel placed the container down carefully as if the contents of the box were as delicate as the paper surrounding it. He pulled a bundle wrapped in black plastic out from under his arm and extended it towards her.

  “What’s this?” she asked as she took the plastic bundle from him.

  “Your mail,” he replied with a slight grin.

  “Mail?” she said. “Must be Father’s idea of a joke. How did he even…” She trailed off as she opened the contents to reveal a heavy stack of letters bound in twine. With a weary sigh, she set the letters down on her desk.

  “It was stowed away on a supply drone,” Daniel offered. “It had your name spelled out on the bottom with reflective tape.”

  She sighed again. “I suppose the whole ship saw?”

  “It was hard to miss, ma’am,” Daniel said.

  “He couldn’t have contacted me like a normal person?” she asked, lifting a translucent piece of glass that flashed with the day’s breaking stories. Her image appeared under an unflattering headline. She saw it, frowned, and turned the device over. “No, he had to embarrass me with his nonsense. As if it wasn’t enough to be his daughter? As if I needed to be reminded of...”

  She stopped and closed heavy eyelids around tired blue eyes. Taking in a deep breath, she let it out slowly as she tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “Thank you, Daniel. Is there anything else?”

  “No ma’am,” he replied though he made no motion towards the door. His back straightened even more.

  She raised an eyebrow in invitation. “Is there something else, Daniel?”

  “The captain has invited you to dine with him tomorrow evening.” He lingered as his statement slowly formed into a question. “Privately?”

  She leveled a tired look at the stacks of paper on her desk, then to the parcel of unread letters. She frowned.

  “Splendid,” she replied with a performer’s sincerity. “What time?”

  “1900 hours.” He turned his attention to the well-worn lab coat that hung loosely on her slender frame. He shifted in his boots uncomfortably.

  She followed his stare, self-consciously smoothing the wrinkled front of her coat with her palm.

  Daniel opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, gave a salute, and exited back through the door.

  She draped her hands over her face and grimaced. “Dinner,” she scoffed. “I’m sure that’s what he wants.”

  She spun back and forth in her chair idly until the sight of the metal container caught her eyes. “Hello, handsome, did you miss me?”

  She sprang from the chair and flipped open the latches on the lid of the container. There was a hiss as the hermetic seal was breached. The lid opened slowly—too slowly for her taste. She pressed against it until the hydraulic hinges strained in protest. She reached inside and pulled free a thick tome wrapped in worn leather. As she lifted it out of the container, a single scrap of synth-paper tumbled free. She ignored the note and set the book down on the desk in front of her.

  The book said nothing in reply. It sat as silently as it always had, its dark leather cover holding tightly to its secrets.

  She stared at the book for a moment then bent down to inspect the note from the floor. It was slick to the touch and carried the faint smell of algae. She unfolded it and read:

  Good luck.

  -L

  “Bastard,” she cursed as she crumpled the note and tossed it to the side of her cabin where a bin sat overflowing.

  She turned her attention back to the book, opening the cover before leafing through several pages hurriedly. Though she was concerned for the frailty of these pages once, she was no longer. She was tired of tiptoeing around; she was through being polite. She had to discover its secrets. She was growing impatient, impatient with its silence. She needed answers, and that bastard Leeland wasn’t going to help. She was running out of time.

  There were mountains of research material at her disposal, thousands of years of academia. She had correspondence with over a dozen noted linguists, volumes of histories, and possibly the most comprehensive collection of myths and legends curated upon her embedded drive. None of that made a damn bit of difference. She ran every test she could think of; the pages were still blank—as blank they were the day the book was first discovered.

  She looked at the stack of letters in front of her.

  She knew her father well. But his suggestions, well-intentioned or not, had brought her no closer to discovering the book’s secrets. What would be different this time? Months spent, and she was no closer to the truth. She had to consider the possibility that the book held no secrets. It was blank—a practical joke with a payoff several millennia in the making.

  She lifted the stack of letters from her desk. Few wrote by hand anymore. Fewer still would waste actual paper to do it; then again, her father was always prone to excess.

  She unwound the cord that secured the bundle of letters in place and stacked them out in front of the book. She laid them out side by side, organized by the date scrawled in the upper corner. There were six envelopes in all, and each envelope was thick with folded pages.

  She crumpled the plastic bag then felt something at the bottom. Reaching in, she pulled out a small wooden box that had stowed away among the letters. She ran her hand over it, admiring her father’s craftsmanship and opened the lid to reveal a thin silver knife on a bed of purple velvet. The inscription on the blade read:

  To my brilliant daughter

  “Only you would think to send a letter opener,” she said.

  She li
fted the first letter and edged the knife to the crease in the corner. She slashed. Pages covered corner to corner in varying shades of ink tumbled out, pages that showed all the worrying signs of a brilliant mind. She unfolded them and began to read. At times she turned to her notepad, scrawling symbols with an identically inscribed pen. She pored through the pages, separating the flashes of insight from the ramblings of madness. Once finished, she folded the pages up and placed them back into the envelope. She lifted the second letter and slashed.

  “Ouch!” she shouted as pain erupted from her hand. On reflex, she pulled the guilty knife away from her finger. She froze as a single drop of blood fell from her finger, staining the opened page of the book underneath. She jerked her hand away, but not fast enough to prevent two more drops from falling.

  “Shit!” she shouted. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  She looked over her desk in a panic. Finding no solution, she grabbed the opened letter and threw her father’s pages over the book, hoping to absorb the blood. She blotted feverishly and prayed.

  Several breathless moments passed. Ignoring the fear that lodged inside her throat, she lifted the letter and assessed the damage. Pale pink streaked across the page like a poorly cleaned crime scene. Her blood, staining the pages of a book thousands of years older than written history. Her blood, destroying the archaeological find of a lifetime.

  She wrapped one of her father’s pages around her finger and slumped back into her chair. She felt the urge to run, to hide, to shut out the lights and crawl into her bed forever, but she was no longer a child.

  “Not like this,” she groaned, flipping through the pages. Those few drops of blood had marred the top page and soaked through enough to be visible on the second and third. She turned to the fourth and found it to be unblemished.

  “Leeland will know what to do,” she said, grabbing the translucent device to her right. “Isaac, call…”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “I would never live it down,” she said. “Just another fuck up from a family of fuck ups.”

  “I am sorry, madam, to whom would you like me to place a call?” the accented voice from the device replied.

  She paused as she looked to the knife she still held in her hand. “No one, Isaac. Never mind. You can rest, thanks!”

  The device replied, “Very good, madam.”

  No expression marked her face as she looked at the book. There was no sign of the dark intent she considered as she brought the knifepoint to its spine.

  “No one would notice a couple of missing pages,” she reasoned, “I’ve bound books before, Father could help with the…”

  Movement caught her eye—she stilled. The blood that had smeared the page was fading. The knife dropped from her hand and clattered on the desk before falling to the floor. The blood continued to dissipate like a wave pulling back from the shore. When all was done, the page was clean and clear. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

  She rubbed a hand over her tired eyes and looked again at the page.

  “What in the…”

  Red flashed. Symbols and designs appeared on the page as if struck by an antique typewriter. She stared intently. Some characters lingered while others recycled back into the blankness of the page. Some she recognized, languages she half-knew or had seen before, but they were jumbled into an incomprehensible series of vertical lines. If there was a hand, some unseen intelligence behind the display, it was an illiterate one.

  She peered closer and placed her hands on either side of the book. The symbols seemed to respond to her touch as they twisted and assembled with new determination. Slowly, they became clear as a blood-red pattern took shape. Several words flashed in and out of existence, their life a brief candle. Then all fell away from the page as it had before. A single crimson word remained.

  Hello.

  She stepped away from the desk and rubbed at her eyes again. She looked with suspicion to the empty bottles of wine that littered her cabin. Her gaze shifted to the bed along the wall. It was piled with clothes that had sat undisturbed for days.

  “How long has it been?” she asked. “A day? It couldn’t have been more than two, no, I rested a few hours last…”

  She trailed off. The word was gone and the page as blank as before. She stared at it, daring it to move, daring herself to believe what she just witnessed. Moments passed, and she felt the muscles in her neck and jaw relax. She eased back into her chair and released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

  “Hallucinating, now that’s a first. Better get your house in order, Doctor, or you’ll be moving into one with padded walls.” When two breaths became twenty, she turned back to the blood-stained letter in front of her.

  “Well, Dad, it looks like your letters came in handy after all.”

  As if responding to the sound of her voice, the page sprang to life. Hundreds of words winked in and out instantaneously, much too fast for her to register. This time, her shock was short-lived.

  “Record,” she said, pressing a finger to her wrist. Her left eye flashed briefly.

  Hello.

  “Mom was right to leave,” she whispered. “It does run in the family.”

  She stared at the word, written in bold crimson, and something flickered from deep in the basement of her mind.

  “What is the composition of blood?” She asked. “Water, salts, nothing so generic or mundane. A strain of bacteria or...or a virus, maybe? Something unique that I carry…some genetic marker? No, no, how would a virus interact with...hemoglobin perhaps? An invisible ink with a protein catalyst for hemoglobin?”

  She grabbed her glass tablet. “Isaac, show me the chemical structure of hemoglobin?”

  The device flashed, and a new picture emerged. She studied the image then shook her head dismissively. “It wouldn’t be iron, Leeland would have run a test on any base element....”

  She took a calming breath. The obvious was clear. Genetic disposition, lack of sleep, long hours, stress, bad food, cramped quarters, and lousy wine had formed a potent physiological cocktail. Her worst fear had happened; she had finally lost her fucking mind.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  Blood red letters swirled in response then settled into place.

  Knowledge.

  “Madness more likely,” she replied though the scientist she was bid her to accept the impossible. “Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

  Yes, we can hear you, and no, this is not madness.

  “Says the talking book.”

  The letters faded, swirled, then formed a new line in the same script.

  There is much to say. It will take time to explain.

  She laughed a hearty laugh, one that would be home at any asylum. “I believe my schedule is clear; it’s not often you get to witness your own mental breakdown.”

  Patience, we have waited too long.

  “Waited for what?”

  Our salvation.

  “Excuse me, uh book,” she said. “I can’t help but notice you keep referring to yourself in the plural?

  The others. They slumber still; it will take time for them to awaken.

  “I see.” She grabbed a notepad and made a quick note. “Got it, there is more than one voice in the talking book—noted.”

  We shouldn’t start like this.

  “Ignoring the more obvious whys and hows, let’s start with something easy. What exactly are you, outside of the obvious talking book?”

  The book paused as if thinking.

  We are quin.

  “Okay,” she said. “Is that your name? Or the name of your people?”

  No, not my name, not a people…

  You have no word for it.

  It is in all things; it is all things.

  She put a finger to her lips. “Quin is mater, atoms, the…”

/>   We live between such things.

  She scribbled another note. “Right…”

  There is much to say. It will take time to explain.

  “Oh, sure. I understand,” she said. “Take your time. I’m just going to sit here quietly and think for a bit.” She pressed her wrist again. “Confirm recording.” A chime rang in the recesses of her mind.

  It all began with a promise of iron.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Summer 1272, Cyllian Imperial Count

  I stood up and gestured for Crylwin to join me, not that I had to; he could have made three guesses to where I was sitting and still had two to spare. He was an hour late, I noted as I looked at the oculus above, but thankfully so was my contact.

  “This place is fucking packed,” he said as he took the seat opposite me. He never seemed bothered having his back to the room, Cyllian pride or Cyllian arrogance.

  I gestured to the serving girl to bring another round. She acknowledged my request with a smile. “Rohger said some lord is prepping a war raid into Merelands. Retaliation for some attack on the homesteads west of town. A few were killed, survivors are being put up in the Southquarter.”

  Crylwin grunted. “Seems like every merc in Belen is here with some of daddy’s copper.”

  I smoothed the front of my gray leather jacket then squared my back against the wall. “Not many stars or jackets with them.”

  Work for the Imperial Mercantile Guild was pretty straightforward. Stars on your collar made you an officer, you had rules, and you followed a code. Jackets, like me, followed the stars. We would listen, learn, and with a little luck earn a commission of our own one day; we called it making ten. Mercs were different. They followed coin and that typically led to trouble.

  “She likes you,” Crylwin said as he tilted his head towards the approaching serving girl. “No accounting for taste.”

  “Melly?” I asked as I watched her push through the crowd with our drinks in hand. “I suppose, but it’s a sad sod that tickles the barmaid.”

  Crylwin opened his mouth as if to object, then took a drink instead.