Blood of an Exile

by Brian Naslund

  Bershad gave Felgor a look. “If I’m right, someone on those ships will have orders to let us through.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  Bershad shrugged. “At least our souls won’t have trouble finding the sea.”

  * * *

  Once they came within a league of the harbor, a Papyrian frigate diverted from the blockade and chased them down. The ship was nine times the size of their schooner. When they came up along their port-side rail, the bald heads of two Papyrian sailors appeared just long enough for them to throw two roped harpoons into the deck of their ship.

  “The fuck?” Felgor shouted up. “Not like we’re gonna run off.”

  “Not with that torn-to-shit boat, you’re not,” someone called in a Papyrian accent.

  “That’s my point! You’re wasting harpoons.”

  “Not really. We’ll just pull ’em out of the deck after we kill you two idiots. Who else is on the ship?”

  “It’s just us,” Bershad replied. “Who’s in charge up there?”

  Things were quiet for a moment.

  “I’m the captain,” came a deeper voice. “Who are you?”

  “Come get a look at my face,” Bershad said. “Trust me, you’ll know it.”

  A moment later, the sunbaked face of a Papyrian popped over the deck. His eyes were stuck in a permanent squint and his jaw was covered with scraggly gray hair.

  “Step a bit closer, yeah? Eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

  Bershad moved forward. Brushed the black hair away from his cheeks. He could hear some of the crew whispering to each other, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. The captain spat into the sea, but otherwise his face remained unreadable.

  “Caught yourself a pair o’ blue bars, I see. Not a unique problem.”

  Bershad rolled up his sleeve to show the long line of dragons running up his arm.

  The captain sucked on his teeth for a moment. “That, on the other hand, is a fucking sight to see. Silas Bershad, welcome home.” He paused. Scratched his jawline. “It’s just you two? Queen Ashlyn said her sister would be with you.”

  “Afraid not. But I need to see Ashlyn right away.”

  The captain winced. “That might be a bit difficult, given her plans for today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Best I explain on the way to the harbor. Come on, I’ll take you in.” He gave the ship a once-over. “We might as well just let this shit-heap sink.”

  * * *

  Bershad jumped over the ship’s gunwale when it was still five strides from shore. The shock of landing splintered the bones in his left foot, but they shifted back into place three steps later. The healing power of the regrown limb hadn’t gone away yet.

  “Hey!” Felgor shouted, working his way down the gangplank. “Hold on, will you? We can’t all grow new fucking legs.”

  “No time!”

  Bershad couldn’t believe what the captain had told him. Ashlyn was going to get herself killed over an army that didn’t need raising anymore. A war that didn’t need fighting. He had to reach her.

  “I’m not passing up the chance to meet the queen I did all this shit for—that’s how you get cheated out of a reward,” Felgor said, hopping onto the dock. “Where we headed?”

  The captain had told him that Ashlyn was meeting Cedar Wallace outside the main gate of Floodhaven. The road from the harbor would lead them straight there.

  “This way. Keep up or I leave you behind.”

  39

  ASHLYN

  Almira, Floodhaven

  Ashlyn walked out of Floodhaven with all her widows by her side. Behind her, Carlyle Llayawin and his wardens followed, along with Linkon Pommol’s much larger force. Linkon had volunteered his archers to guard the castle walls so that Ashlyn could keep the last of her wardens nearby.

  She wore leather riding pants and a silk shirt with loose-fitting sleeves to hide her wrists. Over her chest, she wore the sharkskin breastplate of a Papyrian widow. The castle blacksmith had taken it from one of the widows who died during her coronation and refit the armor. She carried no steel. Had no metal of any kind on her body.

  Linkon stood to her left, gazing out over the field. He was wearing an expensive set of green armor—the metal was acid-stained to look reptilian. His neck looked almost comically skinny with so much thick metal around it.

  “Ashlyn, I must ask you one more time,” Hayden said. “Do not do this.”

  “I agree with Hayden,” Shoshone said. “We could have you on a ship to Papyria in an hour. Dying on that field doesn’t help anyone or anything.”

  “Neither does fleeing to Papyria.”

  Both widows had spent the morning trying to convince Ashlyn to change her mind, but she was resolute. This was the only way. Ashlyn thumbed the vial of Gods Moss that she’d tucked inside of her right sleeve. The dragon thread was tied to her left wrist.

  “I will go to the circle alone,” Ashlyn said. “Everyone else will stay close to the walls, where our archers can provide cover. Protect yourselves and protect the city, no matter what occurs. I will not have any more people dying for me.”

  Linkon nodded. “By your orders, my queen.”

  Ashlyn looked at Linkon for a moment, but didn’t say anything. There was no turning back now. She motioned for Hayden and Shoshone to come closer.

  “If this doesn’t work, go south to Umbrik’s Glade, then east along the river until you reach a watermill.”

  Hayden frowned. “My queen?”

  “That mill has a bird trained to return to Himeja castle. The miller will know where to find the others that are still scattered around the Dainwood, too. If I die, you have to get word to Empress Okinu. Do you understand?”

  Hayden frowned for a long time. But eventually nodded. “Yes, my queen.”

  * * *

  Ashlyn walked across the field alone. The sound of her feet crunching on dry summer grass filled her head. She wasn’t scared. Things couldn’t get much worse than they were, and there was a strange comfort in that kind of resignation. She wondered if Silas had felt the same way when he went to kill his first dragon.

  There were a hundred wardens marching toward her from across the field. Ashlyn could make out a white-haired man in the lead. He wore red armor. A green twinkle flashed over his right shoulder. An emerald in the pommel of a sword.

  Cedar Wallace.

  The chalk circle was ringed with dozens of mud statues, all of them holding scraps of steel. Ashlyn stepped between two of them, entering the dueling grounds. As Wallace’s men approached the line from the other side, they spread out along the border in a semicircle, letting Wallace cross alone. Only two people were allowed inside the circle.

  Ashlyn and Wallace approached each other. Stopped when they were a dozen strides apart. Cedar’s silver hair was combed and tied into a neat bun, his beard trimmed. He’d painted three mud streaks through his hair in the western style. His armor was made from hundreds of red enameled scales that shifted with his movements like a snake’s hide.

  “Didn’t think you’d show,” Wallace said.

  “You were wrong.”

  Wallace grunted. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  “I have a question for you, first.”

  “Don’t try and talk your way out of this, half-breed.” Wallace took a step forward. “The circle’s for fighting and nothing else.”

  “Linkon Pommol helped you get extra soldiers into my coronation, didn’t he?”

  That stopped Wallace, but he didn’t respond.

  “Someone tipped you off that I was moving a group of my wardens from the walls to the castle. The high lords were the only ones who could have known about it.”

  She’d suspected Korbon or Brock for a long time. But something in Linkon’s face as he was calling for a horse and joining his men outside the castle walls had bothered Ashlyn.

  Wallace smiled. “You’re dead anyway. Guess there’s no harm in you knowing. That’s
right—your skinny, indebted confidant betrayed you. He’s been against you longer than I have.”

  Ashlyn clenched her teeth. Felt the thread on her wrist start to sizzle.

  “He’ll die next, then.”

  “Probably,” Wallace said, drawing the blade from his back and swinging it into a relaxed low guard. “But it’ll be me that does him.”

  Wallace stalked toward Ashlyn. She moved to Wallace’s left so he’d have to strike from across his body. She touched her wrist with a fingertip. Felt the energy waiting there.

  “You were never fit to be queen,” Wallace said as he moved toward her, slow and confident. Ashlyn kept bobbing left, watching his hands and feet for the right moment. “For all your drawings and studies and conviction, you never saw what the world truly is—a brutal and cruel storm.” Wallace crossed his feet to follow her circuitous path. “All anyone can do is carve out a small corner and protect it. Your father understood that, but you—”

  Ashlyn slammed the vial of Gods Moss into her palm hard enough to break it. She unwound the dragon thread and ripped her bleeding, moss-covered hand down its length. The familiar spark of energy filled her fist, and then something far more powerful spread into her body. It cascaded up her arm and snaked inside her veins. Every nerve ending in her body spun into a raging turmoil. She pulled the storm deep into her chest, the way she’d practiced all those long nights alone. Felt skeins of lightning skimming across her lungs and heart, then she opened her palm and watched the energy run back down her arms and pool at her fingertips.

  Wallace froze. Sword hanging limp at his hip.

  “What the fuck is that?” he muttered.

  “My carving knife,” Ashlyn said.

  She fired a single bolt of lightning at Cedar Wallace. It struck his right arm—red scales from his armor spilled across the grass, starting little fires on the ground. The second blast struck him in the breastplate, knocking him on his ass.

  Cedar’s eyes widened.

  “Sorceress!” he screamed. “Demon-fucking bitch!”

  His panicked eyes looked for help from his men outside the circle. They had drawn their swords, but hadn’t crossed the chalk.

  “Help!” Wallace shouted to his men, his voice cracking. “Help me!”

  The wardens hesitated for a moment—the chalk circle was a sacred boundary in Almira. But so was the line between demon’s magic and men. They rushed across the white chalk a moment later, screaming for her death.

  It was Ashlyn’s turn to stalk forward. She grabbed Wallace by the throat and lifted him off the ground as if he were a child. The energy in her body gave her unnatural strength.

  “Wait!” Wallace shouted. “Just wait!”

  Ashlyn squeezed.

  Smoke poured from Wallace’s mouth. She pushed the full power of the moss-fueled dragon thread into his body. The grass at her feet turned brown, then black with heat, rippling and expanding in time with her hammering pulse. The mole on Cedar Wallace’s face cooked under the blistering glow.

  There was a pop. Everything turned white.

  40

  GARRET

  Almira, Floodhaven

  Garret closed his eyes and shielded them from the explosion with his hand, but his vision flashed orange anyway. The veins inside his eyelids were momentarily ignited. When he opened his eyes again, Cedar Wallace and the wardens around the circle were gone.

  Ashlyn Malgrave stood in the center of a scorched ring. Shoulders rising and falling with each long breath. Curls of lightning were still rolling up her shoulders and snapping around her eyes. A whirling cloud of dark ash swept through the empty field, then into the sky where it dissipated to nothing. Garret had seen a lot of strange things in his life, but he had never seen anything like that.

  “What happened?” asked a warden near Garret.

  “Where’d all of ’em go?” came another.

  A steaming corpse landed at Garret’s feet with a wet smack. The scales of Cedar Wallace’s armor were glowing pure white, as if they’d spent an hour at the bottom of a blacksmith’s furnace. Some of the chinks were fused to skin and white hair. His face was a melted ruin.

  Linkon had been right, one part of Garret’s job was done for him, but it looked like the other half of his work was going to be more difficult than expected.

  The widows broke formation and rushed across the field to their queen. None of Linkon’s wardens stopped them, but none of the Malgrave eagles rushed to help, either.

  The men around Garret broke into nervous, muttering chatter.

  “Gods … is that Cedar Wallace?”

  “How did she do that to him?”

  “She’s a witch. She’s a fucking Papyrian witch.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Fuck knows.”

  “If Ashlyn won the duel, the siege is over, isn’t it?”

  “Who gives a shit about the siege now?” The warden pointed across the field. “She just turned Cedar Wallace to steaming mush and killed a hundred of his men in the blink of an eye!”

  Garret glanced down the line and spotted Linkon Pommol, who was shifting his focus between Wallace’s wolves and the widows rushing to create a perimeter around Ashlyn. The high lord wasn’t a warrior, but he was smart enough to know what needed to happen if he was going to end this day as the king of Almira.

  41

  ASHLYN

  Almira, Floodhaven

  Ashlyn’s vision sparked and crackled. Her body burned—every vessel and nerve alive with heat. She knew the thread should have brought agony beyond comprehension. But pain wasn’t the right word for this feeling.

  She ached in a way that she would miss once it was gone.

  Time slowed. An invisible current spread down Ashlyn’s body and through the earth, connecting to the heartbeats of every human on the field. It was the way Ashlyn imagined a Ghost Moth felt while hunting from the skies—a world of prey connected to the tangled pulse of her body. She felt the wild rush of her widows crossing the field to protect her. The fixed uncertainty of Linkon and his men holding fast by the wall. And the panicked rage of Cedar Wallace’s now leaderless army—all wolf masks and white eyes, hungry to avenge their fallen lord. They were the closest to her, and the largest threat. The front line locked shields and started moving toward Ashlyn at a run. They’d reach her before the widows, and with twenty times the numbers.

  Ashlyn rooted her feet onto the burned grass. She started counting wolf pulses the way she once counted mortar seams on her bedroom wall. The only difference was numbers.

  She opened her palms and unleashed the dragon thread’s current—white lightning slicing over grass and mud before exploding into the mass of wardens. The electricity surged across their shield wall, expanding like a spider’s web that sparked and popped against armor and flesh before slamming thousands of men onto their backs as if they’d been struck by an invisible wave.

  A fraction of the warriors in the vanguard had deflected the lightning with their shields. Maybe three hundred men. They kept charging her. With a grunt of pain, Ashlyn squeezed down on the thread, pushing more blood and moss into the reaction. The lightning cracked and grew until it was flowing from her right arm like an enormous whip. She lashed out at the incoming wardens, tossing them into the air like scattered coins. They landed near the tree line from which they’d charged, bodies bouncing once and then going still.

  When it was done, Ashlyn fell to one knee—all the power and energy drained from her body. Her fingers were numb. Vision blurry. Just as she was about to fall, a strong pair of hands caught her.

  Pulled her up.

  42

  GARRET

  Almira, Floodhaven

  Garret kept his eyes on Ashlyn until the widows obscured his view. Hard to tell if she was truly hurt. She had definitely fallen.

  Ashlyn hadn’t killed all of Wallace’s wolves, but she’d come close. Most of his army was nothing but a pile of smoking meat. The trees behind the destruction were roasted and split. Lea
ves burning. It didn’t take long for the smell of cooked flesh to reach Garret’s nostrils.

  The wolves on the periphery of the line were still standing, but the decimation of their numbers had swallowed whatever fight they had left. The line wavered as men dropped their weapons and ran into the forest.

  Linkon’s men seemed ready to do the same—they glanced nervously at the closed gate behind them. Many were edging backward, angling to be the first underneath once it opened again. Ashlyn was on the cusp of defeating two armies all by herself. That was impressive, but also unacceptable. Garret worked his way over to Linkon, who was staring at the destruction.

  “She’s hurt,” Garret hissed. “Vulnerable.”

  “You’re sure?” Linkon asked, not in any rush to lose his army, too.

  Garret looked back across the field. It was hard to spot Ashlyn between the wall of black leather, but he was pretty sure she was still on her knees. It was a risk, but Garret always finished the job. And even sorceresses died when you wrapped a noose around their neck and pulled.

  “Order your men to charge those widows,” Garret said, motioning to his rope. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Linkon squinted toward the circle of widows. Prodded his horse forward a few paces. “Wardens!” he shouted in a powerful voice. “Hear me!”

  The men looked to their lord.

  “You are men of Almira. True warriors. Not some pack of frightened wolves who scamper from a fight!”

  That earned a low rumble of approval. Funny how far a confident voice will carry men.

  “We are sworn to protect Almira and her people against all enemies.” Linkon drew his sword and pointed it at Ashlyn. “We do not tolerate demon-fucking witches. She’s been weakened by her devilry, I can see it! We need only finish off her foreign protectors and destroy the dark magic she’s brought to our land.”

  The men howled agreement. Linkon waited a moment before speaking again—allowing the wardens to rile themselves up. Garret wondered how he’d gotten so good at war speeches. This had to be his first one.