Excerpt: The Flames

Several miles outside the city limits, on a green and well-kept patch of land dotted with oak-cherry trees and natural sculptures, a house is burning.
The fire is still very small, and the people inside haven’t yet awoken to the smell of smoke. They are still asleep: the woman stirring, the man snoring, the child dreaming.
A thin trail of smoke is visible, rising into the sky like a white flag against the black night. Eight pairs of eyes are waiting outside to see the first flames. Eight figures in black are surrounding the innocents inside, melding into the shadoes, watching. Their hands bear the mark of royal ownership, the mark of power.
The man inside the house is awake now, and he is arguing with himself over whether to wake his wife and child now, and expose them to the wrath of those who are waiting, or whether to let them suffocate in their peaceful sleep. As soon as he smelled the smoke, he knew those were his only two choices, and now he can’t choose.
But he doesn’t get to choose, because in seconds his wife is awake and when she sees him, she knows it too. She’s up, and she’s running to the room nextdoor. Her child is in her arms now, skinny and squirming with life in her arms, warm and frail as the flames rise in the hallway and they run, but not to safety.
The child is crying as the marked ones appear out of the shadows, trapping them with the flames at their back. The man is cursing and arguing with himself, or at least that’s what he thinks he is doing, but really he is crying too.
The general gives the word and four men attack the crying man as he fights, kicking and struggling. The woman’s eyes close as he falls, but it is the child who is screaming for him, who is squirming and calling and reaching her arms out.
As his men tear the young girl from her mother’s arms, the general looks down and places his gun in his young apprentice’s marked, shaking hands.