Page 1 of Nemesis Mine
Chapter One
After more than two decades of honest, hardworking wrongdoing, Cyrus had gathered a veritable treasure chest of tips on how to get the worst out of yourself. Number one on that list: Commit at least one unpleasant act every morning.
The sun was climbing in the east as Cyrus tucked his dagger back into his boot, eyeing the wooden bridge with satisfaction. It was well-made—sturdy posts and neatly trimmed slats, with just enough space between them to glimpse the stagnant water below. The thick rope binding the beams together had been tightly knotted and secure, but some patient sawing with his sharpest dagger had seen to that.
He placed a boot on the nearest post, testing his handiwork. It shifted uneasily beneath his weight. A job well done. Straightening up, he grimaced at the twinge in his back. He had spent longer than intended hunched over the rope, but he’d wanted to ensure the results were worthwhile. Soon, some unfortunate peasant would takea shrieking tumble into the bog. Cyrus intended to relish every moment of it.
As he sauntered off, he smothered a yawn with the back of his hand. He hadn’t slept well last night, which could be risky in his line of work. He’d long since believed that beauty sleep was an essential part of a wrongdoer’s routine. Too many lived by the misguided notion that the less sleep you got, the more chaotic, unreasonable, and admirably evil your actions would become. It was true that sleeplessness could add a touch of drama to villainous proceedings, but Cyrus had never bought into it himself. For one, when he was overly tired he tended to become weepy. For another, eye bags and greasy hair didn’t fit his aesthetic. Ten hours of sleep: That was his usual quota for peak wrongdoing efficiency.
Which is why it had been surprising to unhook his silk sleep mask that morning and realise that not only had he managed a mere six hours, he’d also somehow developed a strange, knotty tension in his shoulders that made his neck crack noisily when he rolled over. Cyrus rubbed absentmindedly at the base of his spine and rolled his shoulders back. Hopefully a good day’s villainy would help settle him into a nice, satisfied sleep tonight.
Carts were beginning to trundle along the old stone bridge at the far end of town, laden with wood from the forest to the south. Ranragh was the kind of place you smelled before you saw, the tang of salt from the harbour mingling with the damp, earthy scent of rain-soaked ground. The town was a ragtag cluster of buildings huddled around a central square and crisscrossed by a labyrinth of narrowalleyways. Its patchwork of faded grey rooftops leaned and jutted at odd angles, giving the distinct impression that Ranragh’s first occupants had crammed as many buildings as they could into the meagre space before land surrendered to the water.
It wasn’t particularly glamorous, but there was an eclectic charm in the lack of order. Anyway, it was his. He was the resident wrongdoer. Like it or not, the people of Ranragh owed him their respect. And fear. And plenty of offerings, left outside his mountainside lair in the hopes that he could be bribed to leave the locals alone.
Not that such bribery worked. Cyrus often enjoyed a trip into town to cause a little trouble. Nothing too serious; just enough to ensure the townsfolk held a respectable and healthy amount of trepidation for him. A wrongdoer’s reputation was everything, after all.
He hiked his hood up as he crossed the bridge, more for the drama than out of any real need for anonymity; he did enjoy it when people met his eyes and recoiled in horror. Still, the drooping hood obscuring his features and the black cloak trailing like ink in his wake added a nice touch of theatre. He didn’t have any particular plans for today, beyond sabotaging the bridge—sow a little discontent here, a touch of strife there—but he could always make sure he looked his malevolent best.
Ranragh’s central square was already bustling with morning activity when he reached it. Cyrus cast a bored eye over the townsfolk scurrying about their dull business, but peasants all looked much the same to him: downtrodden, grubby, vacant expressions. A handful of stalls had beenset up, old and young alike gathered around to view their wares. Nosy, he prowled closer. At one stall a woman sat knitting a scarf behind a wooden table heaped with striped atrocities and matching mittens. A man to her left offered sketches, his charcoal-stained fingers moving deftly over the parchment. On the right, another woman was carving the shape of a small wooden pixie out of cedarwood with a sure hand, the blade scraping against her calloused thumb. Before her lay a tray filled with finely detailed figurines of magical creatures. She’d carved a few sprites, still unfortunately common across Athaca despite the much-needed invention of sprite spray, but she had also carved creatures relegated to myth—a unicorn, a griffin, a phoenix with wings outstretched. Unlike the sprites, and a few goblins stubbornly lurking in the cave systems further south, most magical creatures had the sense to find pastures new with the expansion of Athaca’s civilisation. Cyrus eyed the pixie forming in the woman’s hand, her knife shaping out spindly limbs. He enjoyed a creative hobby or two, not that he would ever admit it, even if a champion of the realm pinned him down and threatened to remove his fingernails. He was highly proficient in some areas; less so in others. Recently, he’d been trying his hand at embroidery. Results varied. Those cursed beads were so fiddly.
The woman’s menagerie of magical creatures was attracting a crowd. She was very good. It was annoying. Cyrus scowled, pushing into her audience to snatch a figurine from the fingers of a gawping toddler. It was a skilfully rendered goblin, its bulbous head too large for its scrawny body and each sharp tooth displayed in a leering grimace.
Over the child’s yelp he heard a cry of outrage from an adult, hastily stifled.
“Hey, you can’t—oh.”
Cyrus grinned to himself. Yes,oh.Oh, that’s Cyrus, dread Earthshaker, most fearsome villain. He hasmagic, children: Don’t mess with him.
He moved on, keeping an eye out for any other openings for easy mischief. A man staggered out from the apothecary with three wooden crates of glinting glass vials piled high in his arms. A cart heaved down a narrow alley, squeezing between uneven walls and packed with pallets of fish that teetered precariously. From within the gloomy depths of Ranragh’s sad little gift shop, rarely visited despite the hopefulGet your souvenir seashells here!sign in the doorway, a pasty teenager leaned over a window display of stacked mugs with a look of deep concentration.
Cyrus was itching for something better, something bigger. Inspiration was needed. He paused, taking in the scant offerings around him with a pursed lip. To find the truly special opportunities, he needed a bird’s-eye view.
There was a vantage point he liked to utilise from time to time, in a renovated storage barn just off the main square. The building used to be a church, a relic of the time when the four great gods and their followers held this land in a choke hold. All that meant to Cyrus was that the high vaulted roof with a handful of tiles missing from one corner provided a handy spot to lurk in the rafters. Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly lackadaisical, he came up here to eat seeds and spit out the shells at passersby. Most importantly, the barn provided the perfect view ofhis finest achievement, a glorious reminder of the pinnacle of his wrongdoing career.
The mural of Cyrus—ofEarthshaker—was painted on the back of Ranragh’s town hall by an accomplished hand. He loomed over the scattered and uneven buildings with a fierce brow and a wicked smirk, particular attention paid to his cheekbones, to the glint of light in his dark blond hair. The stormy grey of his eyes was swallowed up by a crackle of purple fire as he called upon his magic. Behind the figure, the artist had detailed the dreadful event for which Cyrus was still best known: the earthquake he had called upon the city of Eborre nearly fifteen years ago, the day they named him Earthshaker. Half their city had crumbled before he called his terrible magic back. The mural was a testament to his ferocity, of Ranragh’s fearful respect and awe for their wrongdoer.
Cyrus had, admittedly, painted it himself. It had been the work of several long nights, toiling by candlelight and bundled in a heavy disguise so that nobody could identify him as the artist. When an insomniac peasant caught him early one morning, paint-smeared and red-eyed from hours spent squinting over his own jawline, Cyrus pushed him into the well.
He liked to gaze upon it from time to time. He’d worked hard to get the nose right. Cyrus clambered up into the rafters to his usual spot, made himself comfortable, and parted the tiles to admire the view.
And froze.
There was Ranragh’s town hall, the familiar pale stonework he’d chosen to display his mural. Around his paintedlegs, people often tacked up parchments wherever they could reach, advertising livestock or brothels or the latest weird nut milk.
There were no such parchments today. Instead, a new and shiny poster had been plastered over the mural, obscuring it from view. His villainous smirk was covered by another’s confident smile.
Cyrus’s stomach swooped. He lurched backwards until his back bumped a joist, heart thudding against his rib cage as he stared blankly at the dusty crates of grain in the barn below. He knew that face. He didn’t want to, but he knew it.
Poster or not, he could feel the man’s eyes boring through the tiles. Slowly, already cringing, he resumed his viewpoint.
The champion looked just as Cyrus remembered. Tall, broad-shouldered; an impressive enough figure, if you liked that sort of thing (Cyrus didn’t). A strong, square jaw; surety in his expression. There was a slight lift to the corner of his mouth, like he was contemplating a secret nobody else knew. His hair, falling tousled over his forehead, was a warm reddish brown.
The burst of dislike was instant and intense, sour as a gulp of spoiled milk. He took in the champion’s pose: the loose, casual grip on his sword as he leaned against it, more ornamental than anything, like he didn’t really expect a challenge. The knowing expression, detestably smug. The sheersizeof the poster, domineering over the town—overCyrus’stown. And the wording beneath, picked out in bold square lettering:
Meet Maximillian, champion of Heliarth.
What didthatmean? Ranragh belonged to Cyrus. It simply wasn’tdoneto muscle in on someone else’s territory, not unless it was an invite (and wrongdoers never invited anyone). The champions took it very seriously; every three years their Federation hosted Athaca-wide elections, enabling their starry-eyed heroes to stand for their settlement of choice with the victor selected by the voting public. Once elected, they operated as stewards to protect and care for their towns. Most of it was for show, of course—champions usually had a council in place to help handle the most boring aspects of day-to-day life, and many places still elected a governor or mayor to work alongside. But the champion was the face of operations, the one the townsfolk chose to be their leader, the esteemed ruler of their precious domain.
