Nichole Squire

Summary:

In a fractured world, outsiders are indoctrinated into the worship of Azrax, the god of Chaos. 

Stripped of their identities, they are herded into the brutal city that bears his name and assigned the lowest caste: the Grays.  

Grays live to serve Azrax’s elite, grinding stone, dismantling war spoils, and proving their devotion in hopes of ascending the city’s rigid hierarchy. 

Sinza Gray’s entire family has already proven their faith and risen to the prestigious rank of Greens, but Sinza remains behind while quietly resisting and searching for an escape. 

Everything changes when her investigations go too far and she must pay the price. She learns the world is much bigger and much more dangerous than she ever imagined.

Her only hope may lie in an unlikely alliance with one of the High Prophet’s sons, a revolutionary determined to bring down the system from within.

A dark, transformative fantasy, this is a story about breaking free from indoctrination, reclaiming forbidden knowledge, and forging truth in a world built on lies.

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Excerpt

1

Deja Green pulls me through the twisted streets of Azrax and my vision blurs with nausea from the blow she dealt me moments before. I can’t place where I am in the mosaic of streets, ramps, and tunnels that she drags me down. Am I in still in the Gray district? It’s possible. The lines of stairs are hazy and the streets spin ahead of me. Her fingernails knife further into my wrist. She files them into points and paints them with tiny black spirals in miniature odes to chaos. It must be nice to be a Green. Polished nails wouldn’t last a day for a Gray like me. I stumble over the end of my own boot as I try to match her pace.

Clang, clang, clang.

Deja’s implication spell announces our arrival in a cacophony of sound and bursts of light. It brings everyone to the streets. Clusters of people point at me and lean into one another with excited whispers.

I don’t have time to explain. Even if I did, I wouldn’t.

Deja guides us up and over, and around the dirty green compound that my mother lives in. Rain pours into my eyes as I search the faces of several onlookers. It’s hard to make out particulars at the pace Deja is forcing, but I don’t see either of my parents. I choke down a mouthful of hot saliva that’s been pooling in my mouth as we skirt around several buildings that jut into the street at impossible angles.

The back of Deja’s head bobs like a disconcerted turkey as she warbles down the street. I picture her witless blue eyes that are always blinking too much as she nods to members of various fellowship-circles. Her bottom lip is more full than the top, which makes it look like she’s pouting. Many people admire her.

She was my least favorite instructor at the Academy.

The streets of Azrax are intentionally created to serve as a labyrinth of river rock, cheap lumber, paints ranging from putrid pastel to gaudy oranges and greens, multitudes of people, ladders, creatures, and fragrances all mixed up in a dizzying effect of purposelessness. It’s like curdled soup.

I stumble over a loose cobblestone and I rip my hand away from Deja’s grasp to catch myself. Her nails burn across my flesh. I try to regain my balance, but she whips around and rakes at the air, narrowly missing my face as I duck.

I fall to the ground, landing awkwardly. Pain erupts in my ankle and my knees send a jarring burst of pain through my body when they hit the stone. Lines of beaded blood swell across my arm from where Deja’s nails have dug in. She grabs a hold of my hair. I can’t escape for as long as her spell remains active. I’ll shine like a beacon until I arrive at the sanctum. I’ll also cause a racket of clanging bells wherever I go. This doesn’t stop her from additional cruelty.

She pulls upwards and my scalp screams with pain. I grit my teeth as tears creep forth.

“That’s what you get for trying to escape.” Her lips twist into a bestial visage of hate.

“I wasn’t tryi-” She kicks me in the hip with her studded boot. Someone laughs.

It doesn’t hurt as much as my scalp, knees, and ankle. She doesn’t have enough distance from me to do as much damage as she could if she didn’t have a fistful of my hair in her hand. I glower into her furnace of a face. The endless clanging continues to toll around us as Deja’s snarl is illuminated by her own implication spell for the crowds to bear witness to.

She tightens her grip and I feel a hunk of my hair break off,relaxing the tension to my head even as pain blossoms.

“Get up.” She releases me to wipe her nails across her apron. Faint streaks of my blood are left behind. I hope they stain.

I wobble to my feet, dirtying my palms as I push myself up off the drenched street.

I’m taller than Deja, but she’s more solidly built than me. It’s not in my best interest to try to fight her. Besides, she’s allowed to treat Greys however she deems appropriate. Everyone is. Even other Greys. So long as we aren’t raped or outright murdered. It’s supposed to be an incentive to progress into higher circles after conversion.

I wince as she grips my bloodied wrist once more and we journey up a makeshift ramp that weaves below the banners of the Amber district’s entrance. Some buildings here are up to five stories tall and they stand as uneasily as children’s play blocks. A whisper could blow them over. I would scream this whole city down if I could.

“That’s Sinza Grey. … always … no good. My ma says … might … disown her.”

“Can you … she’s still a Grey? I bet … a heretic …”

We’re getting closer to the center of the city and Deja has picked up the pace.

“… woman grown.” Someone agrees. “… intolerable …”

My auburn hair hangs in thick wet strands over my eyes. I wipe it back, wincing at the pain in my scalp above my left ear. My fingers come back bloody. I used to keep my hair tied back or braided, but that isn’t allowed here. My compound is to have our hair long and loose. Deja’s compound was lucky enough to be assigned braided hair when their elder threw the Spindle. Her dark braid ends in a rough knot right above her shoulders. It’s one more thing I hate her for. She didn’t choose it. Everything here is decided by chance.

I hate her regardless.

I was fourteen when we left Lanvier. Every day before that, my mother would braid my auburn hair in elaborate tails and wreaths; impossible falls of twists and waves that would be tied over one shoulder. I can still smell the cinnamon oil she used to tame my unruly strands into place. Once, she tucked her favorite lily hair comb above my ear and I spent all day at school touching it to make sure that it was still there until my instructor made me remove it. It was a simple gesture on my mother’s part, but these memories give me hope that a kinder life might still be waiting beyond Azrax’s gates.

“Better her than me. Thank blessed Chaos for that.”

I’m pretty sure this voice belongs to someone from the compound that neighbors mine.

I search the faces around me for one that might be of use, but Deja loses patience and hauls me towards her. One of my knees buckles and I ram into her barrel of a body. The rain collecting on her thick green robe wets my cheek. She shoves me off, but maintains her grip on my injured wrist. My pulse beats beneath her fingerprints. The proximity between us makes my stomach churn like vinegar hitting a vat of spoiled cream. She smells of old cooking fat and sage.

The last time her compound rolled double sixes (or the “scrubbing sixes”) for bathing must have been at least two weeks.

None of the eyes gazing out at me are the large dark moons belonging to my younger sister Isla, or as she’s now called, Mirri. We’re told that we look alike, but my sister’s face has always reminded me of one of the frosty tower owls of our once home. I’d know it anywhere. Even in a crowd, in the fading day. Even in the rain. My own is oval rather than heart shaped, less pale, less serene, and less unknowable. It would be better if my features weren’t so expressive. More like my sister’s unaffected porcelain doll smile.

I haven’t seen a mirror since I was fourteen so I might look completely different from what I remember. Still, I’d get into half the amount of trouble if we look as similar as people say.

Clang, clang, clang.

Stensa Marigold, who sat across from me in Spirituality and Tradition, is standing at the side of the road, craning her neck. I smirk at her and give her a small wave. Her nostrils flare and she retrieves a fortune dial from her pocket and begins to consult it.

Like me, Bohon is making his own journey to the sanctum and I can hear a second implication spell going off in the distance beyond the unfinished scaffolding of Freedom Street. They split us up to cause twice the amount of spectacle and serve as a warning to any other would-be delinquents. Unlike mine, his alarm has more of a honking quality than a clang. I’m not sure which of ours is worse.

“Heretic,” Stensa suddenly spits. Saliva dribbles down her chin. Apparently, her fortune dial finally told her a suitable reaction. Pity it didn’t go as planned.

We march on.

“Is that one of the converts’ daughters? I tell my boys to stay far away from them. You just never know what ideas they..” The rest of this darling sentiment is cut off as we continue on our way.

Deja nods to the other Chaotics, smiling in a display of weak humility as they commend her for keeping new converts like myself in check.

I’m hardly new. Their point is that I wasn’t born in Azrax. I’m not even close to being an inner circle member. I’m circle eight, a Grey, the farthest from the core and the farthest from salvation.