Riot followed the eastern woman through the streets and after some time, the grim walls of Helgan’s Rest prison reared up before them.

  Riot hesitated just outside the open gates. “I didn’t go through all that just to be locked up again.”

  “Then stay out here and die,” Natalia Quinn replied as she disappeared into the gloom of the prison.

  Riot caught himself scratching at the skin on his arm and cursed before following her inside.

  The Leybound leaned on the bars of their cells and watched them pass, their faces half hidden in shadows.

  “You brought in a stray, Miss Quinn?” one of them called.

  The speaker was a big man, several inches taller than Riot’s six foot and carrying his weight well on his broad shoulders.

  Riot recognized his northern accent well enough. This was the same Leybound who had questioned him through the prison wall a few days before. Questions about the hedron, and Gerrard Price.

  “You look a bit sickly, friend,” the northman went on, glaring at Riot.

  “He thought he could make it without his own barrier,” Quinn replied without breaking her stride.

  Mocking laughter and hissed insults greeted her words. All aimed at Riot as he passed the cells.

  Eyes front, Riot thought to himself. It was a mantra in the regiments and possibly the best advice in any army in all of history. A lot of problems could be avoided with eyes front, or if not avoided, then at least put off until he was strong enough to deal with the ones that were over six feet tall and built like brick sheds.

  “What am I doing here?” Riot asked Quinn as they climbed a stone staircase.

  “You’re meeting the new leybound commander. An arcanist who can help you create your own barrier to the leylines. He asked for you specifically.”

  Quinn knocked on a heavy wooden door, and Riot caught the familiar tang of sweet brandy in the air.

  “No,” he whispered as the door opened.

  Arcanist Riley, stood on a raised platform, a swath of fine blue fabric wrapped around his huge body. A small elderly man knelt at his side with a mouth full of pins.

  “Sergeant Riot! What d’you think, ey?” Riley pulled at the uniform and smiled fondly. The bags under his eyes betrayed his exhaustion, but his voice boomed with excitement.

  “Don’t you salute your commanders?” Quinn’s voice was even, but he knew she was mocking him.

  Riot felt a sinking feeling in his gut and pulled off a halfhearted salute. “Commander, sir?”

  Riley clapped his meaty hands, smiling broadly. “Got you, didn’t I? I told you I wanted to see a bit of action, and Kerne and Roveran wanted a favor.” Riley gave Riot a labored wink. “In return, they offered me this commission. Jolly expensive, but who can put a price on honor and glory?”

  Riot had met plenty of officers who tried to put a price on honor and found to their dismay that there was a price, and it was their lives. “You’re joining the regiments, sir?” he asked.

  “Not joining, Riot, we are the regiment, you and I, and that rabble down there! We’re going to make a real unit out of them, a crack team, and you will be their sergeant. We even have our first mission, though we are running late. I’ll need you to ready the troops for my inspection, take Lieutenant Fitz with you and show him the ropes.”

  “Lieutenant Fitz?” Riot asked, looking around.

  There was a polite cough from the elderly tailor. He looked to be around sixty, with a crown of white, wispy hair that formed a light halo around his bald head.

  “Fitz used to look after my hounds on the estate. Good with dogs, so I brought him here. These Leybound need to be worked, Sergeant, and worked hard. An idle dog will bite, but poke ‘em with a stick and work ‘em, and you’ll never know a more loyal beast.”

  Riot imagined Fitz giving the stick to the northman, Loic, and being snapped in half, his scraps thrown to the others to fight over.

  “Before we leave, Commander Riley, there is the matter of Sergeant Riot’s barrier,” Quinn said.

  Riley rubbed his chin, squinting at something only he could see. “It’s already failing. Heck of a leyline you have, Sergeant. Came at me like a raging bull. Matter of debate about whether the leylines have any kind of consciousness, of course, but on balance, I’d say yours is bloody vicious. It’ll be a long road to tame it.”

  “Perhaps a short road. What about the hedron scar?” Quinn asked.

  Riley bustled over and took Riot's hand, examining the wound. The cracked skin was less swollen and looked to be healing. “Nothing wrong with this one. It’ll hold till the spellcraft is done.”

  Riot pulled his hand away. “Just tell me how to lock it away like you did. No scars, no spells, I don’t want any of it.”

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  Quinn made a dismissive sound. “Such arrogance. This opportunity is wasted on you.”

  Riot’s anger spiked, but he had to bite back his reply because the barrier that held back the leypower trembled. “Just tell me what to do so I can leave,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Riley put a meaty hand on Riot's shoulder. "Look, Sergeant, you’ve been dealt a bum hand, nothing to be done about that. But pick yourself up, dust yourself off and make the best of it. You're not like those blaggards downstairs, and you shan't be treated like them. They’re murderers, deserters, and thieves. Tough enough to have survived being leybound, some even without elixirs. I’ll need your help to beat them into a fighting force, and who better than the last man?”

  “To them, you are nothing more than a sickly dog among wolves. If you ignore us, they will tear you apart before the leyline does,” Quinn added.

  “You would do well to listen to Miss Quinn,” Riley said, stepping back onto the platform and clicking his fingers for Fitz to continue fitting his uniform. “She might be a heathen from the east, but she has a modest understanding of what it means to be leybound. Perhaps you would be best placed to explain, Miss Quinn, in layman's terms.”

  The flash of outrage on Quinn’s face gave Riot savage satisfaction. If he’d said that, he thought, he’d likely have a sword through his gut.

  “You need a barrier,” Quinn said. “You need to draw from the leyline. Then cut it off.”

  “So what, I’ll be able to make darts like the Faelen?”

  Quinn made a dismissive noise in her throat and spoke as if addressing a particularly dim-witted student. “You would need to be bound to a Faelen leyline for that. Our leylines are arcane.”

  Riot recalled the dirty gray light formed by Price that left his skin streaked with black marks.

  “And you need spellcraft specific to the individual. Though that will take some time to craft,” Riley added.

  “I thought you were doing that?” Riot asked.

  The arcanist thrust out his chin. “I do not lower myself to such study. I chose to dedicate myself to military matters, strategy, and leadership,” he waved a hand airily.

  “Then who?”

  “You have enough to focus on controlling the leyline. You can’t bully it into submission as you do everything else,” Quinn snapped.

  Riot bit off another reply. He felt like he had ants crawling under his skin, and he’d already scratched his forearm raw, but the itch was still there. “Get on with it, then.”

  “Picture a barrier—one that you can open and close as you wish,” Quinn explained.

  Riot imagined a fortress, with heavy wooden gates barred from the inside that opened at his command.

  “Arcanist Riley, please take the barrier away,” Quinn commanded.

  “Wait, no—” Riot began.

  The barrier vanished, and the leyline surged into his body, forcing him down onto his hands and knees. His hearing became so sharp that the sound of Fitz carefully cutting fabric almost blew out his eardrums, and he clamped his hands to his head and groaned. His vision became painfully focused before everything burned with a bright light, and he screwed his eyes shut.

  But even under pain and the crushing pressure, there was bitter relief. The raw itching channels in his body soothed even as they burned, until the mixture of sweet poison and maddening pain doubled him over on the floor and he fought to stop himself retching on the carpet, the spirits he had drunk in the tavern burning his throat and nose.

  The barrier snapped back into place, but the ley power stayed, coursing through his veins like liquid fire, pulsing against his skin, trying to escape. He recalled Riley had done something in the chamber to draw the burning power away and he thrust out his hand. “Get rid of it,” Riot gasped.

  Riley’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Fitz, hurry with the insignia. No, not the brocade you fool, the insignia of my rank. What's the damn use of being a Colonel if no one damn well knows?”

  Riot made a strangled noise and Riley appeared to notice him.

  “We really are running quite late, Sergeant, if you would please concentrate.” He grasped Riot's hand, and the leypower was drawn away. The gray light falling like liquid smoke to the carpet and evaporating.

  “Take it away again,” Quinn commanded.

  This time, Riot's pride roared in defiance, and he tried to face the flood, but it raged around his paltry defenses, surging into him and carrying him away. This time, he almost lost consciousness.

  “Perhaps we should leave him here,” Riley suggested, reaching out and drawing the stored leypower from Riot with one hand, while with the other he flicked open a gold watch and peered at the dial.

  “Does Sergeant Riot wish to give up?” Quinn asked.

  “Again,” Riot growled.

  The leypower was unstoppable. His muscles convulsed, and he curled up on the floor, feeling like his head was being crushed in the hands of a giant.

  “Again,” he gasped.

  Each time the barrier was removed, he tasted a split second of sweetness before the maddening pain and crushing pressure, and he found himself longing for it, like walking on a tightrope over a pit of snakes and wanting to fall to soothe the craving for the sweetness of their venom.

  “There are those who focus on the sweetness and become dependent,” Quinn warned, as if she could read his thoughts. “Again,” she commanded.

  “We really must—” Riley began.

  “Do it,” Riot snapped.

  The leyline swept into the raw channels it had cut into his body—the same wordless scream of rage that came out when he charged into battle. The sweetness was the same, he realized, soothing the nervous itch he felt before going into a fight. It had been the same in the gutters of Fallow, where he grew up. Some fought for survival, but for Riot, there was always anticipation, and when the fight began, it was like sprinting down the blade of a knife.

  The power roared in his ears, but dulled this time. The light burned his eyes, but he could see the shadows of Quinn and Riley watching him. His veins burned, but his muscles were under his control, and he fought his way to his knees, then staggered to his feet.

  “Very good, now block it,” Quinn said, her voice sounding like it was coming from the end of a very long tunnel.

  Riot had faced enough walls. First they crumbled under the pounding of the arcanist's hedrons and wikkan workings, and then he and the rest of the damned flung themselves, screaming into the breaches.

  But some walls had held. The great granite fortress of Helgan’s Rest had never fallen, and he pictured it in his mind. The leypower flooded around him as if he stood in the middle of a surging river, and pressure lessened, weakening as he built his defenses, each slab that thundered into place rocking his consciousness.

  Then, when the last piece was slammed into place, the thundering river of leypower flowed to a trickle around his ankles, and he leaned on a spindly side table, shivering even as he dripped with sweat.

  “Very good, Sergeant. Now off you go and ready my troops for inspection,” Riley said, snapping his watch closed.