The only true survivors of war are the ghosts of the dead.

  Yechvan shooed away the dark rumblings of his conscience. He kissed his companion’s bare, green-skinned shoulder and rolled out of bed. Solonia had not yet risen in the eastern sky, and though Yechvan had stayed up well past midnight drinking and carousing, sleep remained elusive. Quiet as possible, he slipped on his clothes and crept into the hall in search of a drink to distract from his somber mood.

  The soft thud of his boots across the wooden floor caused the woman to stir, but she had returned to slumber before he’d even quit the room. Murmurs of pleasure and ecstasy flitted down the corridor on wings of incense, seeping through a nearby door left ajar. Yechvan brushed aside a long strand of unkempt hair, tucking it behind his ear as he descended the staircase.

  Given the late hour, the parlor at Madame Sho’s was almost empty. Contented sighs and euphoric moans escaped the booths—some more public than others—that ringed an open space dotted with tables. In the corners of the room, lush burgundy curtains concealed stairwells that led to separate basements. A human woman with ebony skin and hair the color of the night sky ran a rag across the wide bar separating the patrons from the kitchens and living quarters. She was adorned with jewelry and a shy smile, nothing more.

  Intrigued, Yechvan started toward the bar, but one of Madame Sho’s eager attendants appeared at his side and deftly steered him to his private table. She leaned in with practiced charm, asking what she might do to please him.

  “Spirits please. Strong. A tall horn filled to the brim.”

  “As you wish.” The woman gave a sultry bow, her dark nipples hardly a hand’s breadth from his face. He breathed deep the rich scent of lavender as she brushed past.

  Yechvan stretched out on the pillowed bench and allowed his mind to wander, to remember.

  Inuka. Ooskar. Olodai.

  Their translucent faces lingered, wisps of smoke from an extinguished candle. They sat at his table, the ghosts of the men and women he’d failed. They ate with him, drank with him, slept with him, followed wherever he went.

  The woman returned with his drink. He toasted his ethereal friends with a long pull of the stiff liquor, sending flames down his gullet and blurring his vision. She sat on his lap and took a sip from the cup, kissed him, let the searing liquid trickle from her mouth into his, licked the droplets that dribbled into his thick beard.

  “Thank you for the drink,” Yechvan said. “What is your name?”

  She sidled off his lap, a seductive whisper on her lips, but the name was forgotten before ever it reached his ear. There were already too many crowding his mind. The names of the men and women who had followed him into battle, who continued to follow him, even in death.

  Yechvan kissed her again. “Send my regards to the madame.”

  Ulula, his second-in-command and leader of the legendary bantax, stumbled from behind a curtain with a trio of Madame Sho’s finest: two men and a woman, a tangle of sensuous limbs and roving hands. She belted a laugh and smoothed her tangled hair, shirt forgotten amid her revelry. Rubbing a heavily muscled thigh between one man’s legs, she nibbled the woman’s neck with her pronounced tusks. The only thing Ulula of the Wind loved more than fighting was carousing.

  She caught sight of Yechvan drinking alone, his eyes on her. “Join?” she beckoned, circling the second man’s nipple with her forefinger. Yechvan shook his head and raised his horn. “Shame,” she said with a crooked grin, guiding the woman to the upper floor. “We will need sustenance,” she called out to the bar before disappearing up the stairs in a chorus of boots and bare feet.

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  The dark-skinned beauty behind the counter lingered in Yechvan’s gaze, filling a plate with salted meats and cheeses before following in Ulula’s wake. The burly figure of a similarly garbed orcish man emerged from the kitchens with a tray of drinks, his pine skin studded with jewels. Neither returned, likely coaxed into joining Ulula’s orgy.

  Yechvan toasted his fallen comrades once more.

  Soni. Orno. Pagda.

  “Another nightmare?” Zu asked, dragging Yechvan from his reverie. He eased onto the bench and grasped Yechvan’s shoulder, that familiar, annoying look of concern marring his perfect features. Zu sniffed the horn and motioned to the bar for a drink. “More spirits. And keep them coming.”

  “Something like that,” Yechvan replied. “What brings you down so late? Or early, as it were.”

  “How can I catch a wink at Madame Sho’s?” Zu asked, spreading his arms wide with a gargantuan yawn. “This is my favorite place in all of Banx.”

  “On all of Ex’ala!” Yechvan said, teasing his friend with a laugh. “Then why would you abandon your companions to brood with me?”

  “They are all worn down. They needed a rest, and truth be sure, so did I.”

  “Have you slowed in your old age?” Yechvan jested.

  “Hardly,” Zu scoffed. At nineteen, the pair were in the prime of their youth. And where Zu had thrived in the five years since the Great Northern War, Yechvan had been far too busy withering.

  Zu stretched his long legs beneath the table and interlaced his fingers behind his head, but the sidelong glances he cast at Yechvan belied his feigned nonchalance.

  He had the uncanny ability to sense when Yechvan’s mood soured, but Yechvan wasn’t interested in another lecture on leaving the past behind.

  “You know we must leave for the capital in a few hours,” Yechvan said, grasping for any topic to escape those dark and worried eyes.

  “An easy ride. We will be there by lunch,” Zu countered.

  “And your lesson with the qince?”

  “Bah, he is but twelve years old, still weak and undisciplined. He can wait another day. Otherwise, our lesson will be brief and brutal so that he is injured and I may find sleep.”

  “Your father won’t be pleased,” Yechvan said.

  “Then perhaps the qish should have asked someone else to torment the boy.”

  “I thought the point was to train him,” Yechvan chuckled. Zu’s teaching style certainly was more akin to torture.

  “If Little Grask had been raised by orcs like we were, there wouldn’t be so much work yet to do.”

  Grask’s human mother and uncle had done the boy no favors by sheltering him from his father’s culture. He had much to learn in a hurry. For Banx’s enemies were vast as the heavens and filled with an anger beyond his young imaginings—furious that the orcs had dared to climb from the depths and set foot on the surface of Ex’ala. It was only a matter of time before the restlessness of bellicose leaders would threaten the half decade of peace.

  A tall, slender blooded woman brought more drinks to the table. Her skin shone slick with scented oil, the sable tones of her human lineage shrouding the green hues of her orcish heritage. Zu leaned forward and wrapped her in his embrace, coaxing her onto his lap. He sampled the contents of his horn, nodded his approval and downed the rest. “Thank you,” he said. “Will you take care of my friend here? He is in need of companionship.” He set two coins on the table for the drinks. Six more for her company.

  Before Yechvan could protest, she slipped off Zu’s lap and onto his. Soft hands slid beneath his shirt and caressed his chest, tracing the puckered flesh of his scars as her lips found his jawline.

  Zu stood and drained a second cup, pressed his brow to Yechvan’s in a brotherly embrace. Then he left, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “You’ll thank me later,” Zu called from out of sight.

  The woman was beautiful. She worked at Madame Sho’s, so it needn’t be said. Her eyes, dark with flecks of gold, entranced Yechvan. She teased his neck with tusks that had been filed down—perhaps she’d been a slave in another life.

  “What is your name?” Yechvan asked.

  When she told him, he didn’t even hear.

  There were already too many names to remember.

  Gugus. Zayda. Ino.

  Surrounded by the ghosts of his past, she led Yechvan upstairs.

  The orcish woman he’d left in his room rolled over. The blooded woman lay down next to her. Her tongue traversed the labyrinth of olive skin glistening in Hlenice’s soft glow. The goddess of the moon was nearly full and had settled just over the windowsill, illuminating the entrancing spectacle of the flesh. The room was the best in the house at that time of year.

  They pulled Yechvan onto the bed, but he bade them begin without him. They didn’t need him yet, if ever. He rolled onto his back and made another half-hearted effort to banish the lost spirits. At least there were worse ways to spend the endless, unforgiving night. Staring up at the ceiling, he sighed, resigned, and surrendered to that deepest and darkest of chasms: the past.