Act 1

An Age of Ashes

 

Akt 1 - A Hatchling’s Cost

 

Chapter 1 (Ver 1.0)

 

The road had been going west for so long that Sagari had stopped trying to count the days.

The caravan moved slowly through the uplands, following the old routes between the mountains. Reddish sand gathered beneath the covered wagon and seeped through every gap in the wooden boards. During the day, the heat settled heavily over everything. At night, the cold came down from the slopes and crept beneath the blankets.

There were eight wérs with the caravan, all armed. They carried spears and short swords, and two of them kept bows within easy reach. They called themselves merchants when anyone asked. There were bales of silk and cotton cloth, jars of sesame oil, and dried goods among the cargo. Sagari had never understood why anyone bothered pretending she was not the most unusual thing they carried.

She remained behind a curtain in the rearwagon. The men rarely spoke to her, which was probably for the best.

Her wings were bound tightly against her back. The bindings had been changed twice since they left. The skin beneath them was still tender, and every movement pulled at the damaged membranes. The Keeper had done that before they left. She had torn the membranes in enough places to make flight impossible, then bound the wings tightly against Sagari’s back. They would heal over time, but it had turned the transfer into days of useless agony. Not that the Keepers would have cared. “It’s for the best,” she had said to her, as if this were completely reasonable.

Sagari was used to pain by then, to withheld food or playthings, to having things taken away simply because someone else had decided she should endure it.

There had been apricot trees near the Hatchery, and the first blossoms had opened despite the season still being cool, when they had departed. The air had smelled sweet. Sagari remembered that because it had seemed wrong that anything could smell so pleasant on a day like that.

Her Keeper had ruined her wings that morning, too, checking the bindings twice before the strangers arrived. Sagari had protested and tried to pull away, but the Keeper had only tightened the leather and told her to endure it. She had spoken in the same calm voice she had always used when teaching.

Stay in your pleasing shape.

Don’t upset the people.

Do not make yourself frightening.

Sagari had known all of those rules already. She knew why they mattered. Humans preferred things they could understand. They preferred things that were useful, things they could command. And if something could not be made useful, humans sometimes preferred that it simply did not exist.

The Keeper had then informed her that this was a transfer, and her tone made it clear that it was a very important one.

“All hatchlings will find their purpose eventually,” she had explained.

The Hatchery was not a home for life. They were bred and trained for human purpose, and Sagari was one of the first ones they had dared to give away. Usually they needed the females for further breeding, but this King, who ruled the empire they were heading to, was willing to offer a ridiculously high sum to get his hands on the most promising one. Which was unfortunately her. And so Sinthara had made an exception.

In the end, she was entrusted to strangers wearing the livery of a foreign king, charged with escorting her safely and without raising suspicion. There was no way back.

Beyond the curtain, one of the guards was singing. Another was arguing with the driver about the road ahead. Sagari remembered the strange animals they had passed along the way, the unfamiliar plants growing beside the road, the different words men used. 

She had never seen much beyond the walls of the Hatchery and had not even known how endless the sky could look. She had absorbed every new detail with something close to hunger since then. 

The mountains were behind them now. Somewhere ahead lay the riverlands of the Ishtaraya Empire. 

Sagari stopped her pointless pondering when something new came to her attention. The familiar smell of animals and cargo had disappeared beneath the heavier scents of the city that lay before them. Bitumen. Spices. Too many humans packed into too little space.

At last, they had reached the capital Naharesh, their final destination.

The camel train was left behind at the city gates. Inside the city, they left the camels behind and moved their goods into a covered trader's cart, which drew far less notice among the traffic of the streets. Sagari remained beneath the cover while they worked, watching through a gap in the wooden slats whenever someone came close enough to block the light. The occasional clink of a camel bell faded behind them as the cart rolled beneath the great gate. There were fewer people in the streets than Sagari had expected. Most hands were needed in the fields, with the harvest to be brought in before summer's heat descended upon them. 

It was decorated with glazed bricks in deep blue and pale stone colours, broken by bands of painted figures Sagari could not identify from beneath her covering. The road beyond was broad enough for several carts to pass side by side, worn smooth by generations of traffic. For a while, the buildings on either side were kept low, leaving the road open toward the rising terraces of the inner city.

Sagari watched the city pass through the gaps in the wood. She had spent most of the journey looking through narrow openings, but now there was too much to see, and the urge to look kept drawing her farther out from beneath the blanket. Merchants in pleated wool brushed past in kuzippu-sashes. Other women wore brightly coloured thobes, some with wide sleeves and elaborate embroidery. High-ranking women passed in decorated veils, distinct from working women with their faces bared to the sun. And so many skirts. Wool-matted skirts, fretted leather, even skirts made from feathers. 

Her Keeper had once called them humorously the fringe people. Sagari could see her point.

At the city's edge, adobe and reed still dominated the dwellings, but further in, clay brick replaced mud, sometimes giving way to expensive sandstone where the buildings were larger or more important. Timber balconies—shanashil—jutted over the streets, while shade sails stretched between the buildings to keep the worst of the sun away. The grand road eventually gave way to narrower streets where houses crowded closer together, their upper floors leaning over the roads. Small shops opened directly onto the street, and people slipped between them with the ease of those accustomed to having very little space.

The city itself seemed to rise beneath them. Whole districts climbed in broad terraces toward the centre, each higher ring carrying denser buildings and more imposing walls.

Between the terraces lay the workshops that fed the temple's wealth. Great kilns burned behind brick walls, and long weaving halls opened onto the streets, their looms rattling beneath the watch of temple overseers. Workers carried bundles of raw materials and finished goods from one building to another. Sagari watched the overseers more closely than the work. They kept their eyes on the workers and the movement of goods, making certain that nothing wandered where it was not meant to go.

Whenever the buildings opened onto a wider street, glimpses of the riverlands appeared beyond them: green fields broken by irrigation channels, reed beds gathered along the water, palms and low trees rising wherever the soil held enough moisture. Even the dry ground did not mean emptiness here. Life gathered around every source of water, and there seemed to be something new to notice wherever she looked.

One of the things that caught her attention was the driver himself. Until then she had barely looked at him. The camel train had been there to watch, and the humans had given her enough reason to keep her head down. Now there were no camels to follow, and the streets kept pulling her attention forward.

He was an Devasiya.

He was taller than the humans around him, with long ears partly hidden beneath his hair, and around his throat he wore a collar covered in fine engravings. Sagari could not read them from the wagon, but she found herself wondering what they meant until he noticed her staring.

“You’ll see stranger things than that before the day is over,” he said, trying for an encouraging tone, and gestured towards the city. “Naharesh is a good place. The name means River Queen. You’ll have food here. A proper bed, perhaps. Better than a wagon, anyway.”

Sagari barely listened. A piece of his long ear was missing, and she wondered what had bitten it. By the time she had begun considering whether the damage looked more like teeth or a blade, she had forgotten most of what he had said.

The cart climbed another terrace, and the buildings changed again. Their walls were higher here, their entrances broader, their decoration more elaborate. Beyond one courtyard rose a large building covered in blue and a turquoise dome.

“That is the Academy,” the driver said when he noticed her looking.

Sagari turned her head. “The Academy?”

“Scholars, scribes, healers. Mages too.” He nodded toward the dome. “You may see the inside someday, if you're allowed.”

Sagari watched the dome until it disappeared behind the buildings.

She had not known there was a place where mages studied alongside ordinary scholars.

Then the Ziggurat rose above the city, and whatever had occupied her thoughts before vanished.

It was larger than anything she had imagined. It rose above all of them, its blue-glazed tile catching the sunlight between bands of brass while greenery spilled from its terraces and climbed the stone in thick, cultivated growth. Water must have been brought up there somehow; she could smell it even from the street. Steep staircases vanished towards the upper terraces, where the temple stood beneath a turquoise dome bright with painted ornament.

The city seemed to climb toward it from every direction. Roads, courtyards, workshops, palaces, and temple buildings rose in layers beneath its shadow, while the Ziggurat itself continued upward until its summit seemed almost detached from the city below.

Sagari's fingers tightened around the little bag at her side. Her Keeper had not wasted time on sentimentalities, had she? No soft words, no promises that she would be all right, only the last advice and the little travel bag with her only possessions pressed into Sagari's hands before she turned away.

Yet for all the unease twisting through her, Sagari could not deny that this was the most exciting thing she had ever seen. She had spent nearly her entire life behind walls, beneath ceilings, inside rooms designed to keep her and her fellow hatchlings contained. Now there were thousands of unfamiliar faces, strange buildings, new smells, and more things to look at than she could keep track of. And she wanted to see everything.

Realizing how far she had leaned out, Sagari ducked back into the wagon. Her human-friendly Soft-Shape was meant to make her less frightening to humans, but it did little to change what she was beneath it.

An Azhirah was still an Azhirah.

And surrounded by thousands of people beneath the shadow of the Ziggurat, the deception suddenly seemed small and pointless.

The cart did not stop at a palace. It veered toward the lower terraces of the Ziggurat, where the royal buildings and temple administration crowded together beneath the shadow of the sanctuary. A pair of enormous lamassu guarded one of the entrances, their painted eyes fixed over the road as the cart passed between them.

Before anyone could be admitted to the household of the royal family, they passed through the hands of those who served gods older than the city. Sagari was handed off at a bronze-plated doorway, its surface still shining where countless hands had worn the metal bright. No one explained what the building was. It was not the temple proper, and it was not a palace either.

Later she would learn the name for it: Beit-Nazir, the House of Transfer.

 

The interior was quiet, a stark contrast to the noise of the city outside and a relief to her senses at once. The scent of woodsmoke and incense hung in the stagnant air, and the polished walls of the corridor made her feel trapped, as if she had been shut inside a tomb.

Sagari inspected the room closely. It had no windows. Someone had conjured small orbs of light to illuminate the room, their weightless drifting almost soothing. The priests who approached her now, on the other hand, were not soothing at all. They did not even speak to her and instead preferred to speak around her; circling her small frame like vultures inspecting a carcass.

They stripped her travel robes and tossed them into a brazier. They washed her without ceremony. And of course didn’t bother to ask before touching her. The keepers conditioned all hatchlings to tolerate all touching and unwanted intrusion. Hands scrubbed her white skin and the perlmut scales like a pot before a feast. The water was dark with crushed myrrh and bitter herbs that stung her nose and smelled of iron. The cold water did not make it any more bearable.

A female servant with a severe expression coiled Sagari’s white hair until it pulled tight against her scalp. They dressed her in soft, fine-spun linen that felt alien against her skin after all the scrubbing and touching. At least they were decent enough to recognize that her wings were not in a state to be touched carelessly.

Once they had cleaned and prepared her, they shooed her into the inner courtyard.

A woman and a wér waited in the center of the room. The first was a Tupsharra, a scribe of the temple. The other was a Rabkalli, a chamberlain dressed in layers of yellow and copper. They moved around the silent child like jackals, unsure whether she was meat or something more beastly.

The Tupsharra held a cylinder of beaten lead. She touched the metal with a sceptical expression. Within was a sealed glass vial filled with a dark, viscous fluid that looked ominously like blood. She touched the vial with reverence, checking the lead seal against the light, before securing it on the stone plinth.

“The creature is slight,” the Tupsharru said, her reed stylus hovering over a copper tablet. 

“The documents from the Sinthara Hatchery certify her for high intellect and good magical affinity. Their trials support the claim. Though it also says that she is one of the more difficult ones in personality. Blasphemic creature. To say an Azhiratash can be trained as a guardian is to claim a cat can be trained to pull a chariot. Certified or not, I would rather see what she can do before I put the seal of the temple to it.”

The Rabkalli adjusted his heavy sashes. He was a man who preferred not to question the decisions of kings or princes. Those sorts of battles were for the High Priestess to fight.

“The King paid dearly for this acquisition. The hatchery has certified her capabilities. Until the trials prove otherwise, we will assume the certification is worth the seal it bears. Do you wish to tell the King he purchased a runt?”

The Tupsharra bristled, making a face as if she were about to sneeze. “I am a woman of records. The records must be accurate. If she fails the trials, then we have purchased an expensive and potentially dangerous creature for no purpose. And once word spreads that the King brought such a thing into the city, people will ask why.”

“Then record her as a Unique Ward,” the Rabkalli said. His voice dripped with the practiced smoothness of the court. “She is not to be handled as an ordinary slave. The King did not pay dearly for an ordinary slave. She is to be kept under guard, examined, and trained according to the temple’s judgment. She remains property, of course. Until the High Priestess decides what is to be done with her, that will suffice. If it is the gods’ will, the population will accept this strange ward without fuss.”

Sagari stood motionless. Her chest tightened. She wanted to wrap her tail around her leg for comfort, but she forced her muscles to lock. She had learned early not to flinch. Even as they debated her existence, she remained silent.

The Rabkalli reached out and took the lead cylinder from the stone plinth where it had been placed, apparently to busy himself with it. Sagari did not know what was written on the cursed thing, nor why they needed the blood vial. She only knew that it was obviously important enough to these people that she would need to find a way to acquire it somehow. Another unpleasant reminder that she was trapped now in this place; nothing but a bird caught beneath a ceiling with no chance to escape. Her heart was mercilessly thrumming as she glanced at the open sky above her, wishing she could fly already.

While she was busy with her own circling thoughts, the scribe copied the inscription twice. The priestess fussed over it again, and the air seemed to grow dense with anticipation. Their eyes kept lingering on Sagari, as if staring might help, as if it could somehow erase her existence. 

She wanted to growl at them, to let the comforting vibration rattle in her chest, but she forced herself to stare instead at the gaps between the floorstones.

 

Then the heavy timber doors groaned open.

Idram-Enlil, the second-born of the princes, entered the courtyard.

He wore no crown. There was only a heavy signet ring stamped with his House’s seal on one finger. His robes were soft, unburdened by the stiff gold embroidery of the court, and his eyes were tired but not unkind. He looked at her differently. There was no suspicion in his gaze, only a quiet calculation, and he tilted his head slightly in consideration.

Sagari decided this was an improvement over the vultures in the washing room.

“Is the transfer complete?” Idram asked, his voice soft enough to barely disturb the air.

The chamberlain cleared his throat and stepped forward, uptight as he began the formal recitation. “The acquisition is recorded, my Prince. Delivered from the Sinthara kingdom without incident. The seals are intact. She is listed as a pure-blood specimen, intended for Guardian training.”

The templescribe standing in the shadow of the colonnade spoke up, her voice lowered to a warning meant for the Prince alone. “She is small for her kind, my Prince, but the nature of an Azhirah is... volatile. The High Priestess questions whether a creature such as this can truly be conditioned for service, no matter what was promised for her.”

Idram-Enlil gave a thoughtful nod and stepped closer.

Sagari did not move. It was always safer to remain silent and watch, but she had been trained by her Keeper to react to humans in the abstract, not to deal with them in unsupervised situations, especially not in an unfamiliar culture. She knew how to perform submission at the Hatchery. She knew how to follow instructions, how to keep visual face contact with her gaze and her body still. But what did any of that mean here? Was she supposed to bow? To speak? To grovel? Touch his feet? Avert her gaze or hold it? Her thoughts spun through one possibility after another until she simply froze, staring at him like a lobotomized owl. 

“Mhh,” Idram mused to himself. “She does not look like a terror. I can sense the magical thrumming in her blood, and it seems indeed promising as claimed. My father will be pleased to hear about her potential.”

His words hung in the still air. The priestess looked away, her objection dying in her throat. The chamberlain just gave her a look.

Idram knelt, ignoring the grit that settled on his fine robes, and brought his face level with hers.

“Breathe, little one. No one is going to hurt you.”

He did not touch her. He seemed to respect the fact that she still had fangs and claws beneath the mimicry, though his gaze lingered on her eyes and then traveled over the scales along her cheekbones.

Since Sagari refused to let her guard down, Idram straightened and turned back towards the observing rabkalli. “She is simply young. The documents say Azhirah learn and grow quickly.” His gaze returned to her, softening by the smallest degree. “And she is terrified. Fear makes any creature look small.”

“But the risk, my Prince...” the templescribe began again, trying to conceal her unhappiness with the situation.

“The King has gone to considerable lengths to acquire a potential guardian, not a monster,” Idram said firmly, ending the debate. “If the Temple does its schooling properly, she may yet become the shield of this city. Log her as a Sacred Ward and have her fed. Real meat, not the slop you give the novices.”

“It will be recorded”, the tupsharra confirmed, and the chamberlain bowed. 

He glanced at Sagari one last time and gave her a short, almost imperceptible nod, as if acknowledging her existence rather than merely the acquisition standing before him.

“You have travelled a long way, and now this will be your new home,” he said, almost softly.

Whatever he saw in her at that moment seemed to matter more than whatever separated their two species.

“The documents say your chosen name is Sagari,” he continued, straightening but keeping his eyes on hers. “So shall it be.”

The courtyard emptied without ceremony. The templescribe retreated first, her robes scraping against the grit, and the rabkalli followed her into the building’s shadows. Idram-Enlil, his duties finished, approached a figure waiting beneath the archway and exchanged a few words too quietly to carry before disappearing through a side passage.

 

Sagari was left alone. The warm air felt stagnant now that the prince had gone.

Footsteps echoed through the corridor, heavy and deliberate against the floorplates. A wér stepped into the light. He was broad-shouldered and moved with the easy precision of someone who had spent his life in armor. He wore a beard trimmed short and practical, lacking the stiff, oiled curls of the high nobility.

Ashdu had expected this summons. The building had been buzzing since the cart passed the outer arch, filled with talk of an unusual delivery. And shortly after, the prince had put him on duty, ordering a steady guard for the arrival.

He had not expected the Azhirah child to look so much like a stray cat.

He knew her kind only from old legends, and the prince had explained that the Azhirah could mold their flesh to mimic humanity when they deemed it useful. This one, though, was doing a poor job of it. Small hornlings were still poking through her hair, and everything about her was unnaturally still, as if she were holding every part of herself in place.

Now the mess was his to manage.

Ashdu exhaled, a short, tired sound, and gave a sharp nod. “This way.”

Sagari followed like a ghost with no desire to speak to anyone.

The halls here were plain. These were the older tiers, stripped of the bright glazes found in the other parts of the building. The stone was greyish and porous. They passed a shrine where the mosaic had buckled and a window without shutters where the wind played softly with the dust.

He reached a door on the higher floor and pushed it open with the flat of his palm. The hinges offered a dry, thin protest.

The inside of the room was simple. There was a carpet and a low, heavy table made of dark wood with fitting cushions. A clay can of tea sat beside a small oil lamp, and a cedar chest stood against the far wall for her things. A window sat high in the wall, narrow and barred with brass. And of course a sleeping place.

“This is yours for now,” Ashdu said, stepping aside.

Sagari lingered at the threshold. That was more space for herself than she ever had, she thought. She gave her guard a questioning look.

“Ashdu,” he said, introducing himself. The name did not seem to fit him, she thought. “I serve the House. My task is to guard you for the next few days, to give you some instructions on the ways of this place, and to ensure you do not become a problem.”

She blinked. Her face remained a mask of forced human pretence, but the tension in her neck showed.

“You rise with the second bell. Food will be brought. The temple administration needs time to decide what to do with you.”

He did not smile, but the cruelty she had expected was missing. It was simply a task for him, and he would do it like any other of his duties. He watched as she finally stepped into the room, then waited without rushing her until she had placed her only belonging on the chest and sat on the carpet.

He left then without a sound, letting the door fall shut behind him.

Sagari stared around, inspected the interior, and watched the particles dance softly in a single shaft of light.

She waited until all noise from behind the door had faded before getting to her feet.

The door was, to her luck, not locked. She opened it carefully and looked down the corridor before slipping out, intending only to wander a little, analyse the smells, and perhaps get some idea of the layout of the building.

On the gallery above the inner court, the air was warmer. Sagari pressed herself into the deep shadow of a pillar, when she caught the scent of human.

Above her, Idram-Enlil stood with his brother, Beliddin.

“It is a reckless gamble, Idram,” Beliddin said. His voice was calm, but it carried the sharp edge of irritation. “Father is losing his grip on reality. To import a feral Azhirah and hope that these people were truly able to condition them properly? To dress a beast in silk and call it a Temple Guardian? This species should have stayed extinct.”

He paced the stone tiles, gesturing sharply. “We should have refused the shipment at the border. We should be hiring mercenaries, not purchasing monsters that are able the chew pieces from people.”

“She is not a guardian yet. We will see how she does once her training begins,” Idram replied. He leaned his weight against the stone rail and rubbed his temples. “Father wants a weapon that solely belongs to us and is capable of doing what no soldier can. The temple has the necessary means to control her.”

Beliddin let out a short, sharp laugh. “Does it?”

Idram looked at him.

His brother's gaze drifted toward the second floor below. “A Temple Guardian would be useful enough to keep the vermin from our walls. But our empire was built to conquer, and Father has been looking far beyond our current borders.” He glanced back at Idram, his voice dropping. “You really think he bought a creature like that just to stand guard?” “He paid for a guardian,” Idram said, though less firmly this time.

“He paid for a breakthrough.” Beliddin’s mouth tightened. “Our armies were trained to crush the northern city-states, brick by brick. But you can't siege a cloud of horsemen, and Father knows it. With a creature like her at the vanguard, we will tear through their cavalry and break every citywall in our way. Or at least, that is what he is hoping for.”

Idram let out a long, tired sigh.

“I don't disagree, Beliddin. But she is here now. If we kill her now, we admit the King made a mistake, and we currently cannot afford any more trouble. Do I have to remind you?”

“So you want to play nursemaid to a winged nightmare,” Beliddin sneered. “What is the price for this loyalty? A city-state of your own?”

“I don't want a city. I want a full night's sleep. War is your ambition.” Idram pushed off the railing. “The Temple will train her. They have the blood, they have the rites, and they have years of practice. If they fail...” He paused, his expression hardening. “Then we will deal with it.”

“And would you have the spine to dispose of her? You?”

Idram did not answer. He only gave his brother plain stare before his gaze drifted upwards, dangerously close to the pillar where Sagari hid.

The sound of a distant door opening warned her. She retreated at once, her limbs moving with fluid, silent urgency as she slipped back across the floor and into her room. Perhaps this was not the best time to spy around.

She dropped onto the mat without a sound, cataloguing all she had gathered.

In fading evening light, the room no longer felt like a place meant for sleep. It had become a workshop where they intended to chisel her into something they deemed useful, and apparently they had already considered simply killing her if she proved unsuitable. Because of course, the world could not simply leave her alone and in peace.

Her chest ached, and a heavy, crushing heat rose into her throat. She felt the pressure there, the stinging urge that might have driven a human child into sobs for relief, but the Azhirah could not cry. Her eyes remained parched, wide and unblinking in the gloom. The emotion had nowhere to go. It simply sat inside her, cold and heavy as a swallowed stone.

She rolled onto her side and shifted her wings beneath the bindings, trying to stretch them as far as the leather allowed. The membranes still felt stiff, although mostly healed by now. Her fingers traced the pale crack in the wall that looked like a serpent.

She wasn't a person. Not to the hatchery personnel and not to these people. She was a secret wrapped in a tame-looking mimicry skin, shaped for a purpose she had never chosen, and according to everything she had learned that night, she was a statue that was not allowed to crack.

But did it even matter? She had been molded for this since she left her egg.

If she failed, the Temple would cleanse the rot. She knew the rules of humans.

Her tail curled tightly against her stomach. She stared at the single shaft of Ayagal's violet light shining through the window until her vision blurred from the lack of blinking, and waited for a morning that promised only more trouble.

 

 

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