by A. C. Cobble
“Matilda is going to regret you staying in Southundon,” remarked John. Then he charged, trying to gain by surprise what he’d failed to earn by skill.
Oliver danced out of the way, letting John’s momentum pull him off balance. As his brother went stumbling by, Oliver delivered a crack with the flat of his wooden practice sword to John’s bottom, cackling at the hearty slap it made.
John yelped and dropped his weapon, clutching his backside with both hands. Scowling at Oliver, he grumbled, “I think that’s enough for me.”
Oliver offered a mocking bow and suggested, “To the baths, then?”
John shook his head. “I’ve got work to do, brother. Don’t you as well?”
Casually spinning the practice blade in his hands, Oliver responded, “I do, but first, I might take a walk and get a little exercise to clear my head. I’ve appointments with the minister of rail later this afternoon and dinner tonight with Admiral Brach.”
“Better you than I,” grumbled John. He frowned. “What was all of that about the baths and the ales? Were you planning to skip the meetings?”
“The rail has been running without my help since our grandfather built the network, and I suspect it will continue to do so long after I’m dead,” replied Oliver. “And Brach only wants to meet so he can beg for more resources. He wants the Company to hand us more of Archtan Atoll’s levitating rocks than the contract allocates. I will say no, and then we’ll have to finish the dinner in awkward small talk. We can reach the same result by avoiding the conversation entirely.”
John frowned at him.
“Without the entertainment of corrupting my older brother, I suppose I’ve no choice but to carry out my duties,” said Oliver loftily.
“You do that,” instructed John, “and don’t think you’re going to go sneaking off any time soon. Father, Philip, and I are counting on you. Even Franklin, though he doesn’t know it yet. The Crown needs you, Oliver. It’s men like you that will keep the empire growing.”
John turned and left, and Oliver was alone in the open-air gallery near the top of Southundon’s palace. He hung their practice swords on the rack and stared at a twisting bit of vine that climbed from a dirt-filled pot, curling along the balustrades and arches that opened over the rooftops of lower sections of the palace. Verdant green in the early spring, the plant was only a week from budding and providing a bright purple accent to the cold, gray stone. Soon, it would fill the tiled space with the heady scent of flowers, competing with the thick salt air that blew in from the sea.
Oliver leaned on the railing, taking care to avoid the creeping vines as he did. Slate rooftops sprawled below, marking the expanse of the palace. Down from that was a mixture of the same slate and fired-clay tiles. Near the harbor, it was wooden shingles or flat blocks of mortar. It was a jagged range of rooftops, as cold and lifeless as the scree on the north side of the Sheetsand Mountains that bounded Northundon.
Northundon was just as damp as her southern cousin, but outside of the walls, it was a sprawl of bleak terrain only broken by the occasional stand of hearty trees and heather. Outside of Southundon, it was thick forest and grassy, emerald green hills, though Oliver could see little of them from his present perch.
The gallery he was standing on was off a quiet hallway in the royal residences. He’d come there decades before as a child when he wanted to feel like he was back in the north. The descending slate roofs had the same mien as the foothills of the Sheetsands. It was the one place in Southundon he could trick himself into believing was like the north, his mother’s home.
There was no warmth in the thought anymore. Southundon, whether or not it felt like it, was his home. Everything in Northundon had been dead for years, and any connection he’d felt to the place was severed the moment he’d spoken to his mother in the Darklands. She wasn’t the same as his memory. Nothing would ever be the same.
Lilibet Wellesley had turned her back on her family. She’d abandoned them in a single-minded pursuit of the dark path. Northundon, the Coldlands, Imbon… all of it destroyed, all of it for a relentless commitment to sorcery. She was dead, just like her victims, and all of it had been a waste. It was always a waste. Those memories of her he used to cherish were bitter now.
He held out a finger, pushing aside a leaf on the vine beside him to see an early flower bud not yet splitting into bloom. Soon, that flower would spread wide and soak in the spring sun, the color and the fragrance a call to little insects that would come sup and help the flower spread its seed. By the middle of summer, it would wither in the heat and die. Like people on the Church’s wheel, it would die to be reborn again at the next turn of the cycle.
Was Lilibet in the underworld now, grinding under the wheel, awaiting new life? Or had she delved too deeply and entangled herself with connections to spirits who would be reluctant to let her go? Ca-Mi-He, the dark trinity, they’d been on the other side for centuries if what Sam had said was true. They were immortal or, he supposed, the opposite of immortal. They may never again experience life. His mother, his uncle, they’d been trying to achieve similar. They’d meant to balance eternal life with those powerful spirits’ eternal death.
Oliver didn’t know if it worked that way.
Everything was about balance, true. Sam, the Church, even the sorcerers — they all said it, but what was the balance to those powerful spirits of the dead? Surely not the fragile life spirits he was familiar with. The fae, the dumb forces that were imbued in the floating islands in the atoll, they couldn’t be the opposite of the eternal spirits on the other side. He’d felt the presence of Ca-Mi-He. He knew the power and intelligence the spirit commanded.
Maybe he was wrong, though. The strength of the spirits in the levitating stones was a mystery. Was that the same force the Darklands had built their capital on? Did the home of sorcery reside on a floating platform of life? Was that a balance that they had achieved?
He didn’t know.
He gently caressed the tightly clenched flower bud, pondering. Maybe all life, all death, was the same. A sudden bloom, a bright presence, and then inevitable death. Natural, persistent, and dumb. They were all mindless energy, struggling to stay alive with no idea why.
Smirking and shaking his head at his own navel-gazing, he flicked the flower bud. Live vivaciously, little flower, he told it, and hells forbid you’re ever inflicted with the torment of self-awareness.
He stood up and frowned.
The bud was opening, vivid purple petals creeping into view. The air was chill, but he could feel the warmth emanating from the flower, or was it going into the flower? Had the plant caused it, or had he?
He looked down at his fingers, stunned. Before his eyes, the flower bloomed bright and full. Had he done that?
Silently, he studied his hand. Then he looked up, over the gray roofs of Southundon, past the bustle of the western half of the city, across the river, and to the forest that surrounded the ancient druid keep. A fortress that had been standing for hundreds of years. A permanent fixture there, uncaring of the busy lives of men that swarmed around it. Uncaring of the Wellesleys and the empire they’d fashioned. For what purpose had those old magic users built such a structure? What possible reason could they have for such an effort?
A monument to the forces of life, anchored in the world for as long as anyone could remember. Was there a mirror to the fortress in the underworld? Was that a balance?
Turning on his heel, he decided the minister of the rail could wait. He needed to go for a walk in the forest.
The Priestess XIII
She spun and ducked, leapt and twirled. Her daggers thudded against wooden targets, and then she was rolling across the stone floor, lashing out with a foot to send a stool tumbling away. She kicked a boot against a wall, propelling herself into a cartwheel, and flung her daggers at a target at the far side of the room. They thunked into the wood, two yards from a red painted circle.
She cursed. A decade ago, she would have made that throw, ev
en upside down in the middle of a spin. A decade ago, she wouldn’t have been breathing so heavy, and her hands wouldn’t ache from gripping the hilts of her daggers so that she didn’t lose them with each impact against a target. A decade ago, none of these skills had been of much use to her.
At the time, she had been half-convinced Thotham was a crazy old man and sorcery had been driven from Enhover along with the Coldlands raiders. Now, she needed to be deadly. Assassins, summonings, sorcerers, or priests — she expected a threat around every corner and every time she closed her eyes to rest.
She paused for a break, mopping sweat from her brow and untying her hair so the jet-black locks fell around her face. She drank deeply from a flagon of water, wishing it was ale. Was it too much ale slowing her down, or was it age?
Was it fear?
She slammed the flagon down. Slowing her or not, she wanted an ale. She needed an ale. She was still thinking about it when she heard quiet footsteps outside of the open door to the dilapidated warehouse. She waited, watching the doorway.
A scraggly-haired head poked around the door. The young girl asked, “Duchess Samantha?”
Sam snorted. “Goldthwaite sent you?”
The urchin shuffled into the open doorway. “She said ya’d give me three pieces sterling silver.”
“Did she now?” asked Sam.
“She did,” insisted the girl, putting her fists on her hips, puffing out her chest, and tilting her head so that her chin rose into the air.
Rolling her eyes, Sam fished the silver from her purse and flicked it toward the girl’s feet. When the girl bent to collect the coins, Sam sprang at her and caught her arm.
Spitting and snarling, the girl tried to pull her arm away, punching at Sam with her small fist.
“Foundling or the Church’s creche?” asked Sam, deflecting the young girl’s blows with her other hand, keeping her grip locked around the girl’s arm, though not so tight as to injure her.
“None of yar business,” snapped the girl, still struggling to free herself.
“Foundling, then?” questioned Sam. “If you’d been taken from the Church, you wouldn’t still be fighting.”
The girl glared at her.
“Where’d Goldthwaite want me to meet her?” asked Sam.
“Befuddled Sage,” snapped the girl, evidently deciding quick answers were the fastest way to free her arm.
Sam let go of her. “Never spread your legs for coin, girl. There are other ways, no matter what Goldthwaite tells you.”
“Easy for a rich girl to say,” retorted the child.
“It’s a slippery path,” said Sam. “If you’ve done it once, it’s easier to do it again, and before long, it’s all that you know. By then, it’s too late. It’s all anyone will want from you.”
The girl eyed her up and down. “What? They don’t want that from ya? Goldthwaite knows ya, so ya can’t tell me ya never laid on yar back. Maybe ya turned from the path of a whore, but lookin’ at those fine clothes ya wear, I’m guessin’ ya just reached the end of it and got yarself a rich patron.”
Sam frowned.
“So righteous,” growled the little girl. “So sure yar path is the right one. I bet ya was from the Church, so ready to tell everyone else what to think, what to do. I’ll do what I gotta do, lady, and yar path ain’t mine.”
“I—” started Sam, but the girl spun and ran away, her bare feet slapping on Westundon’s cobblestone streets.
Her path. Why had the girl used that word? What had Goldthwaite told her? Had the mistress meant it as a message, or was the girl simply repeating Sam’s own term back?
Grimacing, Sam collected her daggers, her pack, and looked around the empty space. A warehouse, not long abandoned. A Company property that was empty following the disaster at Imbon. She’d sent a message to Goldthwaite from there, requesting a meeting on neutral ground where no one would expect to see them together.
The king wouldn’t have had Sam followed, probably. He wouldn’t set his inspectors on Goldthwaite’s tail and have her brought in. At least, Sam didn’t think he would do it while he thought the seer could be of some use to them, but better to play it safe. The Befuddled Sage, not what she’d had in mind for a meeting place, but spirits forsake it, she could use an ale.
“Didn’t think I’d see you around here any longer,” said the barman, pouring her an ale without asking.
“Aye, I’ve moved on,” replied Sam. “Westundon still feels like home, though.”
Andrew nodded and let his gaze flick over her shoulder.
Sam turned and saw Goldthwaite standing in the open door of the pub. The lanterns hanging outside of it backlit her, and it was obvious to everyone in the room she was wearing little underneath of her thin dress.
“Isn’t that cold?” asked Sam as the mistress crossed the room and took a seat beside her.
“Is this where you’ve been going all of these years after you stopped coming to the Lusty Barnacle?” wondered Goldthwaite. “There’s not a single other woman in this building.”
“I know,” said Sam.
“You left the Lusty Barnacle for this?” asked Goldthwaite again incredulously.
“You paid men to kill me,” reminded Sam.
Goldthwaite waved a hand dismissively and told Andrew, “Gin. A big mug of it. The biggest mug you got.”
“I need your advice,” said Sam as the barman moved off to fill Goldthwaite’s order.
“That’s what your message said,” replied Goldthwaite. “I thought we were done with each other. I’m a bit leery of what sort of advice you’d ask of me, girl.”
“I worry I’ve gotten in over my head,” admitted Sam.
Andrew guffawed from the other end of the bar where he was eavesdropping on their conversation.
Goldthwaite rolled her eyes. “You’re just now realizing that?”
Sam pursed her lips, flexing her hand, feeling the stiffness still in her bones a week after they’d fractured. “I’ve had it under control until… Yes, I’m realizing it now. I found employment with the king. That’s why I came to you to sever the binding. Edward has tasked me with protecting his son and fighting sorcery. I couldn’t do that with ties to… to that spirit.”
Goldthwaite shook her head. “I suspected it was someone high up, but the king? Spirits, girl.”
“When I returned to Southundon, Bishop Constance tracked me down. You’ve heard of the Whitemask?” asked Sam, ignoring the scowl on Goldthwaite’s face. “That is her. She tested me, sending two giant ant-like creatures against me. I killed them both, and then she offered me a seat on the Church’s Council of Seven.”
Goldthwaite’s look was shifting from disgusted to concerned. “I’ve heard of them. Thotham told me all about the Council as a warning. They… they want you to sit at the council table in Romalla?”
“To do as they ask will require commitment, a sacrifice,” said Sam. “To fight sorcery, one must know sorcery. It’s a risk, of course, as they’re liable to stab anyone in the back that they can. If I join them, it’s dangerous. If I don’t join them… I have to learn more to protect myself whatever way I choose.”
“You’re wanting to walk the path in earnest,” surmised Goldthwaite.
“I don’t want to,” said Sam, “but if I knew nothing of the dark arts, I wouldn’t have survived as long as I have. If I knew nothing of sorcery, I’d be dead in Harwick, Archtan Atoll, Derbycross, here, Southundon, and without a doubt, the Darklands. I’d be foolish to ignore the simple fact that the little knowledge of sorcery I have is the only thing that has kept me alive through everything. Constance offered me a chance to learn more, thinking I cannot learn on my own, but I do not trust her. It doesn’t matter. Whether I join her or if I refuse her, I’ve realized the only way is forward. This is not a journey I thought I’d ever make, but to continue my work, I must walk the path.”
Slowly, the mistress nodded. “Yes, it is like that, sometimes. There is only one way to go. You want me to mentor you
?”
“Will you?” asked Sam.
“Ignorance is dangerous,” said the mistress. “I imagine you are right. Not knowing could have gotten you killed several times over by now. What Thotham taught you, what you’ve learned on your own, has given you strength. The dark path is no walk in the park, though, Samantha. You should know the risks. There are grave risks to you, to those you love, to your soul on the other side. Do not take it lightly. Death is only the beginning of the price you may pay.”
“I do not take it lightly,” said Sam, “but it is the only way.”
“It is not,” interjected Andrew. The barman was looming over them, his hands braced on his bar, his thick forearms bulging with tense muscle. His bearded chin quivered with barely contained anger. “You seek to hold onto life by embracing death? It is not the way.”
“What do you know of it?” asked Sam.
“I know what any fool knows about balance,” he growled. “Two sides trying to balance on a point need equal weight. Putting everything on one side is certain to result in a fall. This isn’t the way, Sam. To triumph against darkness, you must swim the current. You must dive fully into light and life, not death.”
“Trying to get into my pants?” she chided.
He cringed and shook his head. “You’ve never understood what Thotham taught you, about life, about living. You continue on this way, Sam, and you’re going to become what you oppose. You’ll gain the skills to kill sorcerers, sure, but that won’t be all you use it for. The temptation is too great. The allure of the dark power is far more than you can imagine. Think of Lilibet and what she sacrificed. Is that what you want for yourself?”
“Without sorcery and the help of the spirits,” hissed Sam, “Lilibet would still be alive. I couldn’t have faced her without the skill I’ve gained.”
“And?” questioned Andrew.
Sam blinked at him.
“He has a point,” murmured Goldthwaite, eyeing the barman appreciatively. “I’d heard of this place. Thotham told me about it, but I wondered…”
