“And when Théophile Carada finds out you betrayed him?”
“It will be too late. The Queen’s authority will be destroyed, and his along with it.”
“So that’s what this was all about?”
“It’s a mess, Anton. Somebody has to fix it.”
“I’m sure my father once felt the same way. Was he always a monster? Or did he just become one?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did you survive the fire, Elianor?”
“I don’t know.”
Another drink. Cold blue eyes, a mirror of her own.
“It’s not just about not aggravating the Wardens,” Anton said. “We need the North.”
“What? How can you say that, after everything they did? After what they did to you?”
“I got to know my enemy. Did you know that they aren’t a collection of Kingdoms but a Federal democracy? If we can convince them that a democratic Trist—a revolutionary democracy—is a more stable ally against the Kindred than the monarchy, then they’ll abandon the royalists in a heartbeat. Before, when we first met, I wasn’t sure you had the moral flexibility to see the bigger picture. Now…well, maybe a pair of cripples is what Trist needs.”
I’m no cripple, Elianor thought, and besides, how could that possibly be true? Trist needed a new generation of leaders. And looking at the red creeping up Anton’s cheeks and to the corners of his eyes, she could see he would drink himself to death before the decade was out. But in that time, she could wipe out the sophists and the politicians in the Senate. Obedience to a greater cause, her cause, would redeem him in a way he could never do himself. He would die for something better than the bottle. Then, once she was done with him, she would put herself where she truly belonged.
From under the table Anton brought a fresh bottle, which he opened with his teeth.
“What about you? Are you planning to kill me? What if I refuse to come?”
“Then I’ll replace you.”
He sighed and got to his feet.
“Are threats the only way you make conversation?”
“I like to be efficient. I think we can work together.”
“Well then. Here’s to the Republic.”
He got to his feet and offered the bottle to refill her goblet. She dropped her goblet, took the bottle, and drank straight from the neck.
“Gods save the Queen,” Anton said. “We can leave as soon as you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now,” Elianor said.
A gust of wind through the hole in the wall brought in more ash from the bonfires. To Elianor, it tasted like victory. Looking up into the mountains, she wondered, for a moment, about Nathaniel—the other Nathaniel. Right until the end, she’d thought he would return, like a hero in a story. Foolish, really. There was only room for one hero in this story. She reached for her satchel, but it was gone, burned in the castle, left behind by whoever had dragged her out from the Dead Garden. No books. No law. No evidence. Just Elianor Paine. It would do.
Prologue
On Shadowgate Mountain, where one day in the distant future there would stand a university, a skyway, and a great tower, Lena sat in the house that had once been hers and was now hers again. The little farm had gone to ruin, battered and bashed by growing children and turning seasons and Hodri’s neglect. But there were still traces of the home Lena and Arbalest had built together, back when Arbalest had no surname and their ambitions didn’t interfere with them being together. The same beams in the ceiling, a battered old wardrobe, echoes of laughter from nights when they drank moonshine on the porch and talked about their secret, about the things they would do once he was a Lord on his way to becoming the King.
Lena leaned over the bed and kissed Rees. The burns on her face stung where her cheek touched his. It had been four days, and he wouldn’t wake. She could give him the blood, but what good the blood without the choice? She could change, of course she could change, be a man, or a dolphin, or a river or a stone, but what would be left of the work she had done? Where would her memories go when they no longer marked the flesh that had made them? Soronghast’s fate had hurt more than she expected: perhaps she had been away from her own people for too long.
There was a crash from outside. A bottle smashed when hurled against stone.
She got to her feet and rested her palm against Rees’ sleeping forehead. The body she now wore was more than twenty years older than his, and sometimes she wondered if she had stolen his youth, stolen his chance to have children with a younger woman. She wouldn’t have stopped him. But then, why pick someone for their loyalty and then expect them to stray? His beard had grown too long, and still held flecks of blood she’d been unable to comb out. She would trim it when he woke. If he woke.
The next crash thudded against the front door.
Lena left the bedroom, closing the small door behind her. The ledger was on the table. Next to it was Elianor Paine’s torn satchel. She was tempted to fetch a needle and thread to fix the strap. The table was the same one they had once carted from Durançon, all those years ago. She knew if she touched it, she would remember Seren and Begw, the two girls who had grown up in this room, the last of a long line of girls she had killed in pursuit of Arbalest’s dreams. Of her dreams. Instead she touched the ledger. A list of names and dates and quantities. Proof for any of her children brave enough to come looking, all those little ones, carefully engineered so that the blood would make them invisible to the Wardens, just close enough to being Kindred that if they wanted it, if they really wanted it, they would be ready to start a revolution. Lena had murdered for this dream. She had sacrificed other people’s children for her own. Perhaps all these years in the East had truly turned her human.
Another bottle smashed outside, and Ifanna started swearing again.
“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” Lena muttered, and went to the front door.
Ifanna Brek had left her pony to wander back by the roadside and waded through the snow. A long muddy trail marked her green dress. She swayed as she stood, one hand on a barrel that the girls had transformed into a flower stand several summers ago.
“Did you bring those empty bottles from the castle, or have you been drinking out here all morning?” Lena said, stood still in the doorway.
“Fuck you.”
“Is that all you came to say?”
“Everything is in my name,” Ifanna shouted. “I’d been working Tannyr for years. You can’t do this to me.”
“Do what?”
“You know what! Let Anton run off to the Senate!”
“So he went, did he?” Lena said. “Good for him.”
“Good!? How is any of this good? That idiot Massen is selling half the town to his mercenary friends, land that is mine! Mine!”
“I can handle Massen.”
Already talking like she was staying. Lena sighed. She wanted to find little Wyn, give her a hug and plat her pigtails. But Wyn was long grown up, and dead.
“Like you handled the Garns? Like you handled Wat?”
“As long as we’re just exchanging insults, we may as well do it indoors,” Lena said, her hands still folded in the lap of her dress. “I have more bottles. If you don’t like what I have to say, you can throw them at me later.”
By the time Ifanna had cautiously come up the step and into the room, Lena had poured a clear white spirit into two shot glasses.
“Take a seat,” she said.
“Where did you get that?”
“Hodri’s stockpile. It’s not bad once you get past the first couple of shots.”
“That’s Gwyion’s moonshine.” Ifanna sat in the chair opposite Lena and stared at the bottle as though it might grow legs and run off the table. “Hodri hated Gwyion more than Tannyr did.”
“Everyone’s a hypocrite, if you look hard enough. Cheers.”
They drank one shot of moonshine, then another. Once the bottle was half empty, they talked.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
I should have done something about Tannyr years ago.”
“Done what? I had good daughters. Good sons.”
“You still do.”
Ifanna shook her head.
“Oh, Ifanna, I’m sorry. Dale died?”
“The day before yesterday. Right before the Magistrate took Anton.”
Lena pushed the bottle over to Ifanna. She necked it, then coughed so hard she bent over, hands on her knees and her head towards the floor. When she came up, her eyes were streaming.
“None of this was your fault,” Lena said. “You didn’t make this mess.”
“Of course we did,” Ifanna said. “We were the only ones capable of making real decisions. And now we have to fix it.”
“So, we’ll fix it.”
“What if the Kindred come?”
“The Kindred are already here. We’ve been here for a long time.”
Ifanna dropped the bottle. It shattered, spilling clear liquid and glass shards. Lena didn’t flinch. Ifanna picked back up the nearest glass and drained it.
“You’re the Kindred Prince.”
“There’s no such thing as a Kindred Prince,” Lena said. “Just the Kindred, and the Shapers who serve them. We’ve been trying to free you for decades.”
The battle of Demon’s Pass. Kindred don’t fight Kindred. But she’d had to wait, wait until the armies were defeated, until there was nobody to see before she’d marched across the battlefield, between the corpses, and told Soronghast to drop her man and do as it was told.
“Forgive me, High Shaper,” Soronghast had said, on its knees, “I didn’t know he was yours. I didn’t know you were here.”
“If you were supposed to know, the High Choir would have told you. And now you’re going to atone for the mess you’ve made.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
For a moment she wasn’t sure if it was Soronghast in the past or Ifanna in the present that spoke. Lena raised her weary eye from the shot glass. Ifanna didn’t look like she would try to run. She didn’t even look like she would fight.
“Why would I kill you? The children will be away for a few years. That gives us time.”
“Time to do what?”
Their scans useless, little children of mixed blood spread throughout the populace, the Northern Kingdoms would lose Trist a generation before they knew it was lost. Then one day there wouldn’t be Kindred or human, human or Kindred. Just people. All these notions of nation and race would be cast aside in the rubbish heap of history where they belonged, and one day, right here on the mountain, she would build a school to take the place of the battlements, and all the evils she had done would be justified in the name of a better world. To never again hear someone claim they were special because of where they were born.
“What are we going to do?” Lena said. “We’re going to take our castle back.”
About the Book
Keith Crawford is an ex-Royal Navy officer, a disabled veteran, a Doctor of Law and Economics and a barrister. He is the director of Little Wonder Books and Plays, producing free and original radio plays at www.littlewonder.website.
Vile would not have been possible without all the people who helped support and share the kickstarter that paid for its production Thank you.
Finally, now you’ve read the book, please take a moment to leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. It makes a huge difference bringing the book to new readers, and helping them know whether they’ll like it or not.
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