by Kat Ross
Katsu seized his coat and gently pulled him closer. They stood in the shadow of another wind ship scheduled for repairs, a large cargo vessel. Just beyond the stern, Javid could hear Savah cursing at the carpenters over some tiny detail.
“I don’t care,” Katsu said.
“You don’t?” he asked stupidly.
Katsu leaned forward. “No. I want to kiss you.” A rough whisper in his ear. “Can I?”
Javid nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He felt Katsu’s warm breath on his lips and laid a hand on his shoulder, which felt pleasantly firm. He’d kissed a girl once when he was sixteen, but this was even better. The Stygian’s tongue tasted of dates; he always kept a few in his pocket. Javid curled fingers into Katsu’s springy hair. His heart pounded wildly in his chest and he could feel Katsu’s doing the same. Several intriguing pages from the pillow book flashed through his head. After a long minute, Javid broke away before he lost himself completely. Katsu heaved a sigh, but he was smiling.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “I’ve wanted to do that since the Polemarch’s dungeons.”
Javid knew he was grinning like a fool, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m glad you waited. We both smell better.” He straightened his coat. “Get the Shenfeng ready to sail. I’ll be back within the hour.”
Katsu reached for his hand, their fingertips brushing.
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, we need supplies. Forget Susa. It’s too close. We’ll fly into the Umbra, hide there for a while. Savah can send some boys to the market to buy food. Just tell him you got a hot lead on a commission.”
Katsu nodded and squeezed his hand. “Hurry back.”
Javid tied up his horse in the same place the royal messenger had done hours earlier. The chickens weren’t in the yard. He ran inside.
“Ma?” he called. “Da?”
The house was quiet with no signs of violence. He checked each room, praying his gut feeling was wrong. They could be visiting with Golpari. It was customary to see the bride settled into her new home. Yet Javid noticed that Bibi’s favorite doll was missing, along with his mother’s prized hairbrush and the little wooden horse on wheels Mahmonir was always dragging around the house. Shaken, he went outside and found a gang of dirty kids petting his horse.
“Arash, have you seen Bibi?” he asked the oldest.
“Oh yeah, a fancy carriage came,” Arash replied. “Everyone got in.”
“How long ago?”
The boy shrugged. “Dunno. A while.”
Javid cursed himself. He should have come home first.
“Was there any sign on the carriage?”
The children looked at each other.
“I saw it too,” a smaller boy chimed in. “It had a griffin painted on the door.”
The sign of the king.
Javid nodded calmly, though he was screaming curses inside. He tossed the boys a coin. Then he rode back to the Rock. The chamberlain who took his horse was not one he knew well so Javid kept his mouth shut as he was escorted through the corridors to the audience chamber. He waited there in a state of nervous anxiety until King Shahak finally called for him.
He made the prostration with a dry mouth and racing pulse.
“You look unwell,” Shahak said.
“I am fine, Your Highness, please don’t concern yourself.”
“Did you tell Asabana’s alchemists to come to me?”
“I did, Your Highness. Leila Khorram-Din is looking forward to meeting you. Her father is ill, but I’m sure he will attend you as soon as he is able.”
“Very good.” Shahak studied him. “I hope I didn’t frighten you. But I realized after we spoke that if you are to be my personal wind pilot, it would be shameful for you to live in poverty outside the palace.” His hands twisted the scrap of stained silk. “I know how close you are to your family. I could hardly bring you here and leave them behind.”
“Your Highness is too generous,” Javid murmured.
“I’ve placed them in the east wing. They will be my honored guests. I can assign a tutor to the girls.” He smiled, though it didn’t touch his eyes. “They can learn to read and write, as well as the womanly arts of sewing and music.”
Honored guests. Until Javid did something Shahak took offense to—then they’d all join the menagerie. But for now, he would play the game. What choice did he have?
“You are too kind, Highness. Would it be possible to see them?”
“Of course. But return to me afterwards. We must discuss the next trip across the Gale.”
He thought of Katsu waiting for him at the Abicari. If he was smart, when he learned what happened, he’d get in his ship, hire a pilot to set a course for Susa, and never look back.
Javid made the prostration and backed out of the room.
“Take me to the east wing,” he told the servant who waited outside.
The rooms given to his family were large and comfortable—the gilded cage Javid had imagined. It wasn’t the Inner Court, but it was deep enough within the Rock that there were no windows to the outside. Tapestries depicted pastoral gardens and thick rugs covered the floor that were probably worth more than his whole house.
His parents sat next to each other on a silk couch. Cups of iced punch sweated on the ivory-inlaid table. They looked unharmed but a bit dazed. The moment Javid stepped through the door, Bibi jumped up. She’d had a chicken in her lap and it squawked indignantly. She ran to him, throwing her arms around his waist.
“I’m to be the king’s new pilot,” he said cheerfully, tugging her braid. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Everyone knew you had to watch what you said in the Rock. The Hazara-patis had a thousand ears pressed to the walls. Javid glanced pointedly at the door, hoping they’d get the picture.
I’m sorry, he mouthed to his parents.
His mother glared at him. His father gave a weak smile.
“How come you didn’t tell us we’d be moving here?” Bibi demanded. “They tried to make us leave the chickens. I said I wouldn’t go if we couldn’t bring them and the men got mad, but they finally let me.” She threw herself into a chair and slouched down, crossing her arms with a mutinous expression. “There’s nowhere to play outside. I want to go home.”
“They ought to throw you in the dungeons,” Farima told Bibi. “You’d fit right in since you never take a bath.”
“Farima,” his ma said sharply.
“It won’t be forever, I promise,” Javid said. “But we must do as the King of Kings commands.” He bent down to kiss Mahmonir, who sat cross-legged on the carpet, playing with her horse. “He says he will send a tutor for the girls.”
“How kind,” his ma said in a neutral tone.
“I don’t know why everyone’s so glum,” Farima declared. “I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened!”
Bibi cast her a disdainful look, but said nothing. She might be two years younger, but she clearly grasped the situation more clearly than her sister.
“Leila Khorram-Din will be coming to the palace too,” he said to her. “I can introduce you. She’s an alchemist.”
Bibi’s frown faded. She looked intrigued.
“Is there anything you need?” he asked his parents.
His ma sniffed. “After Bibi’s tantrum over the chickens, I was afraid to waste any more time. The guards who came said we had to hurry. They promised the palace seamstresses would make new clothes for us.” She smoothed her apron self-consciously.
“And that the King’s magus will have a look at my hands,” his da said.
Javid nodded and forced a smile. He held out his hand to Bibi.
“Why don’t you give me a tour?” he said.
She jumped up and they walked through a connecting door to a hall with three bedrooms. They were small but well-appointed, with oil lamps casting a warm glow.
“Farima says I have to share with Mahmonir,” she muttered. “She’s a baby, but I still lik
e her best so I guess I don’t mind too much.”
Javid knelt down and lowered his voice. “Be careful about what you say. People could be listening.”
Bibi nodded solemnly. “What’s King Shahak like?”
“He’s wise and kind.”
She gave him a searching look and didn’t seem to like what she found. His sister had always been too clever for her own good.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Javid’s heart cracked a bit.
“Everything will be fine,” he lied. “I promise.”
22
The Horn of Helheim
Deep in the belly of Val Moraine, a river of blue ice flowed down the walls of a tiny cell. It faced the winds of the Cold Sea and they assaulted the keep with gale force, a howling symphony its sole occupant found oddly soothing. The wind was the first sound he’d heard as a newborn infant and it had rarely ceased over the nearly two hundred years since he arrived in the world slippery with blood, his mother dying even as she held him in her arms.
Culach sat with his chin on his chest and his blind eyes moving beneath the lids. He was dreaming of the Viper again. But for the first time, the sense of dread, of violence and death and treachery, was absent. He felt safe. Loved.
A smile tickled the corners of his mouth.
He stands near a small homestead in the desert. Red and yellow flowers riot in pots on the windowsills. His father is turning the winch to haul a bucket of clear, cold water from the well. The day is cloudless, the shadows clear and sharp. His mother is cooking in the kitchen and he hears her humming to herself. He dips a cup into the bucket and drinks from it. His father sweeps him up in a hug and kisses the top of his head.
“I want to go to school with Julia,” he says. “When can I, father?”
His father ruffles his hair. “Next year, Farrumohr. You must be five years old.”
He pouts, but then Julia skips over and takes his chubby hand.
“Come, I will show you my lessons, if you promise to pay attention and listen.”
His face lights up. “Yes, please!”
She smiles at his enthusiasm. They go to the shade tree and she starts to tell him about talismans, and he has so many questions, but Julia is patient with him. That evening, when the cool breezes come, they sit outside together and watch the moons rise and he thinks he must be the luckiest boy in the whole world.
In the cold cell, Culach shifted restlessly against the ice. Some half-buried part of him knew there would be no more dreams, that he had finally reached both the beginning and the end.
The rest of Farrumohr’s life unfurled in the blink of an eye, but this time it didn’t stop at the suffocating sands. Culach saw him pass through a gate into the Dominion. He felt the grinding weight of centuries and saw Farrumohr change, ever so slowly, into something else, like metal refined down to its purest essence. A creature of shadow and flame, of hate and fear.
Culach saw himself the day at the lake and the great blow Nazafareen struck the Viper, or what remained of him. He watched Farrumohr slink off to lick his wounds, down and down into velvety darkness. Culach watched him dream, a ghostly crown of gold flickering above his head.
The clang of metal dragged him from slumber. Culach tried to hold onto it, his chest tight with inexplicable loss, but it quickly faded as he remembered where he was. The cold cells.
Valkirins—three, four?—hauled him out, stumbling and shivering.
“Where are we going?” he demanded. “Did you find Victor?”
The only reply was a cuff to the head that left him seeing starbursts in the blackness.
But he knew the keep well enough to figure it out for himself after a few minutes. The Great Hall.
The doors must have been open because he heard it from a distance. The raucous buzz of a large gathering. The Valkirins fell silent as he entered, though he could hear a few whispered taunts. Traitor. Coward.
His captors led him to the center of the Hall. Five hundred pairs of hostile eyes bored into him.
“Culach Kafsnjór.”
He turned toward Runar’s voice.
“Where’s Mina?”
“The punishment for treason is death, as you well know,” Runar continued in a maddeningly calm tone. “By law and custom, you’d be thrown over the edge of the battlements. But that death is too honorable for you.”
“Where is she?”
“The cells.” A woman’s voice. Frida of Val Tourmaline. “We asked her if she wanted to witness your execution and she grew…difficult. So you will face your sentence alone.”
Real fear gripped him then. Mina in the cold cells? She’d never survive, not for more than a few days.
“You bastards! You swore to let her go.”
“Only if we found Victor,” Runar said smugly. “He must have crawled into a hole and died somewhere. I suppose we’ll find him by the smell eventually.”
Laughter rolled though the hall. Culach kept his face blank.
“Go ahead, then. Murder a blind man.”
A drier voice came now. Stefán of Val Altair. “Yes, the Dessarians had a soft spot for you, didn’t they? I’m afraid you won’t find the same pity from the holdfasts.”
Culach was dragged forward. Mailed hands drove him to his knees.
“Nothing fancy,” Runar said in a bored tone. “Just chop his head off.”
Culach drew a shallow breath. He had no witty last words. Not even a good curse. All he could think of was the Viper and the random, pointless nature of evil.
Victor crept through the catacombs, his hair matted with cobwebs, a scraggly beard climbing like ivy down his chin. They’d come looking for him, but they didn’t know about the secret chamber. He’d used earth power to rebuild the wall and hidden there as they searched the catacombs. It wasn’t a perfect job, he could see fine cracks where he’d torn it down when he first discovered it, but the Valkirins didn’t look too closely.
He’d wandered through the tunnels after that, moving by touch through the darkness. The cold flesh of the dead no longer troubled him. It was the living he feared.
When Nazafareen took the diamond away, Victor had been so sick with longing it was like a fever, wracking his bones and soaking him in waves of cold sweat. His stomach emptied itself again and again until he felt hollow as a rotten log. Afterwards he had slept, the first time in days, weeks perhaps. When he awoke, his head was clearer.
The talisman was deadly, he could see that now. He was glad to be rid of it and eager to rejoin his wife, Delilah. Yet if he tried to leave Val Moraine, Runar and Stefán would surely kill him. And they had Mithre. He’d heard the Valkirins talking. So now he stumbled along, a faint light guiding him forward. It came from the hidden chamber.
The wall lay in ruins again. And there was the old Valkirin, with the black horn in his hands.
Victor had come to look at it several times, but always his nerve gave out at the last moment. Now, starving and weak and out of options, he reached out and prised the horn from the Valkirin’s frozen fingers. Runes circled the mouth of it, jagged and dire-looking.
Victor couldn’t stifle a giggle.
Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.
No. Not that. They said something else, he felt sure. Something not as congenial.
He giggled again and it sounded too loud in the crypt. He stroked the curling horn with a frown. You’re not mad. Not yet.
But what’s a man to do when they’ve taken everything from him?
What’s a man to do?
The metal felt like oiled silk beneath his fingers. It gave off the faint glow he’d seen from the corridor, just enough to make out the old Valkirin’s features. He fancied the fellow’s thin, bloodless lips curved in an encouraging smile.
Moving as if in a dream, Victor placed the horn to his mouth and blew.
No sound came from the fluted bell, but a wind rushed though the catacombs, dragging chill fingers through his hair. He heard something like a sigh on the very
edge of hearing. Suddenly afraid, Victor retreated into the tunnels. He ran blindly through the oldest part of the catacombs.
Behind him, shadows began to rise.
Footsteps.
They grew closer, stopping a pace away. The echoes fled to the far corners of the Great Hall and died, leaving perfect silence. Culach didn’t know which one of them was his executioner and found he didn’t care, as long as they had a strong arm. In his mind’s eye, he saw the broadsword as it lifted for a two-handed stroke. He tipped his head forward, exposing the back of his neck.
“Make it clean,” he muttered.
Culach tensed for the final blow. And then a wavering scream broke the silence. It was high and raw and full of wild terror. He heard a crunch from the far side of the chamber—very much like a sword slicing through muscle and bone. This was followed by the rasp of iron on stone—very much like a blade scraping the ground on the followthrough.
Culach jerked his head up. Had Nazafareen returned? It seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t think of a single other person who cared about his fate besides Mina, and she was in the cold cells.
Or could it be Victor? Had he gone so mad he’d try to take on five hundred Valkirins at once?
More screams and shouts erupted from every side. And then he heard something that made his blood turn to icewater in his veins.
A cackling laugh that sounded like his great-great-grandmother Gerda.
A heavy weight crashed into him and Culach rolled to the side, slamming a shoulder into the stone floor. Manacles bound his hands but they’d unchained his legs to walk to the Great Hall. He started crawling away, swords ringing around him, chairs scraping against the floor. Bodies stumbled into his path, boots stomped down on his fingers, and still he kept crawling until he found shelter beneath one of the long stone tables.
Chaos reigned. He heard Runar bellowing, trying to regroup, an edge of fear in his voice that Culach never thought to hear from the master of Val Petros. Something slammed down on the table above his head. He heard a wet squelch and horrid gurgle.
