Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  “On the contrary. If we go there—when we go there—we will leave him here to stew and wonder where we’ve gone.”

  Zahra’s words stretched around a dark rib of a smile. “A most excellent plan, my queen.”

  “You’ll hide me from him? Ensure his ignorance?”

  “He will not be able to follow us, my queen. I can promise you that. But there is something I must tell you.”

  Hearing a note of hesitation in Zahra’s voice, Eliana turned, eyes narrowed. “I’m sensing I won’t like this next bit.”

  “You sense correctly. You see, my queen, I refuse to take you to the Nest until I know you can protect yourself.”

  Eliana raised her eyebrows. “Have I not proven that a dozen times over by now?”

  “That was before.” Zahra’s bottomless dark gaze shifted to Eliana’s scalp, where the wound from Navi’s attack throbbed faintly beneath her hair. “You are no longer the Dread of Orline. You are breakable. And my ability to protect you goes only as far as my unpredictable strength. Particularly as I will be expending considerable effort to mask our movements, both from Simon and from the wraiths who live in the Nest.”

  Eliana opened her mouth to protest, but Zahra drifted lower to meet her eyes.

  “No arguments, my queen,” Zahra said. “This is not a point on which I will capitulate. Your safety is paramount, and now you are compromised.”

  “Can’t you retrieve the antidote yourself?” Eliana waved her hand. “Possess a body, put it through the motions of a theft?”

  “You know it is difficult for me to do that. I would not be able to successfully control a body long enough to steal from this place. And, besides, I would be found the moment I attempted it. The Nest wraiths are especially sensitive to the presence of those like them. I will accompany you to protect you, but I must remain as discreet as possible to avoid detection.”

  Eliana bit down on the first five responses that came to her mind. “Well, then. What must I do to pass this test you’ve set for me?”

  “As much as it pains me to say so, you will do as Simon has instructed you,” Zahra replied. “You will read, and you will practice, and you will learn.”

  There again came that hard knot in Eliana’s throat, a constant companion in recent days.

  “You want me to develop my power,” she said, her voice catching on spikes of anger. “Just as he does. You want to make me into something I’m not.”

  “I want you to understand who and what you really are,” Zahra countered. “I want to protect you against yourself and prevent the power with which you were born from consuming you, as it did your mother.”

  The unexpected mention of the Blood Queen jolted Eliana like a sharp blast of cold. “And if I refuse?”

  Zahra’s stare was pitiless. “Then I will not take you to the Nest and to the antidote. And, very soon, Navi will die.”

  5

  Rielle

  “When the wave came for our city, brother, Lady Rielle tore through the skies for it. She faced the fury of our doom with no fear in her heart, her body burning gold as the sun, her godsbeast blazing with fire. I knew then that the Celdarian Church had been right to appoint this girl Sun Queen. Once, my nightly prayers were for the saints. Now, they are for Lady Rielle. May God protect her from all evil.”

  —Journal of Reynar Pollari, Grand Magister of the House of Night in Styrdalleen, capital of Borsvall

  As Rielle tore across the sky, the howling wind and the roar of the approaching water soon swallowed her every thought but one.

  Stop the wave.

  The faster Atheria flew, the more eagerly Rielle’s power licked along her veins, hungry and seeking. It had been restrained unfairly in the village while Ingrid’s soldiers had attacked her beloved ones. It had been aching to leap to their aid, to destroy, and now it flared alive like flames across an oil-soaked field. Rain lashed her body in cold sheets. The force of the wave, and the swirling storm above, sucked the air from her lungs.

  But none of that mattered, not with this wall of water crashing toward her, and her power leaping to life at her fingertips, and the beach below her—the ravaged, white-pebbled beach, crowded with the debris of wrecked ships. And the roads above the beach, soaked and flooded, and the people running frantically up the sea-ravaged city streets toward the castle, desperate for higher ground.

  She couldn’t resist. She directed Atheria along the winding beachside roads and smiled into her rain-soaked mane as she heard the cries of those below. They marveled at her and her godsbeast, stopping to stare and wave and shout, even with death fast approaching them.

  As it should be, Corien murmured, his voice so faint in her mind that it could have been a mere silken thread dragged unsteadily along the back of her neck.

  Rielle shivered, and pushed Atheria out to sea.

  The wave groaned as it moved, sucking greedily at everything it touched—the shore, the mountains bordering the water, the air scraping against Rielle’s cheeks. She looked down once more, her eyes watering from the wind, and saw crowds gathering at the seawalls to watch her, heard their faint screams of terror.

  Bitter and horrible, to have to save them—these barbarians, these fools. She could turn around, force Audric and Ludivine to mount Atheria, and take them home. If Ludivine tried to stop her, she would injure her just badly enough that her mind-speak would be useless and ask forgiveness later.

  And if war broke out because of her actions, Rielle would simply lead the army that had once belonged to her father into Borsvall’s ruined cities and bring her surviving enemies to their knees.

  But she could not ignore Audric’s words: If you save their capital, they will have no choice but to accept our terms of peace.

  She curled her fingers more tightly in Atheria’s mane.

  She hoped Audric was right.

  The wave was upon them, a churning black mountain of spray and foam and furious energy. With a twinge of fear, Rielle recalled the avalanche she had faced in her first trial. The wave’s rage was that of a thousand avalanches. It seethed, rumbling inexorably closer, consuming all other sounds—her own gasping breaths, the heavy beat of Atheria’s wings. Rielle drove Atheria as close to the wave as she dared, the chavaile’s great gray body trembling as her drenched wings desperately fought the wind.

  Rielle closed her eyes and let her power bloom. Come to me, she thought, letting her mind unfocus, imagining her body expanding out past its fragile lines and curves to the air beyond. The wind whipped water against her skin; salt burned her eyes.

  But she was immense. She was of the wave and wind, and yet she was more than either of them, and she could control them as she pleased, and she would control them. She would make them her own. She sensed their energy, their sheer unthinking force, like the silent pull of desire, tightening her skin.

  I do not break or bend, she prayed, the memory of Tal’s voice accompanying her, guiding her through her prayers. Her five-year-old self, safe in his lap. His hands helping hers turn pages in The Book of the Saints.

  I cannot be silenced. She slowly opened her eyes. The world was outlined in infinitesimal grains of gold. The wave was full of them, spinning ferociously bright. They illuminated the howling air like stars. Rielle reached out with her mind, embracing every scrap of wind she could find. Eager gusts crowded at her fingertips.

  She inhaled, and the air bent and bowed, echoing her lungs. I am everywhere.

  Then she snapped open her eyes and thrust out her rigid palms.

  The molten air rippled, exploding out from her hands to slam against the wave and lock into place like a dam. Water crashed against a thousand interconnected nets of gold. A blast of wind shot back from the impact, nearly knocking her off Atheria. But the chavaile bowed her head against the trembling force of the collision, pumped her wings and legs hard, and kept them both steady in the air.

&nb
sp; Rielle gritted her teeth and held fast, fighting the urge to drop her arms and let the wave shatter. Despite the searing connection of her bones to her blood to the shimmering world beyond her fingertips, her shifting vision darkened; her muscles screamed in protest. Their message was plain: she was one mere girl, and this wave was a force unconquerable.

  No, she told her aching body. I am a force unconquerable.

  The gilded wall rippled, shifting—first invisible, then an array of countless shimmering gold specks, then invisible again. The wave spun, slid back into the ocean, then crashed forward again, smaller now.

  “Gently,” she whispered over and over, her body trembling. “Down, down, down.” She doubted the words helped the water settle any faster, but if she didn’t speak, she would collapse. Hearing the hollow sound of her own voice reminded her of the world beyond this wall and this wave—the people below her whose lives depended on her strength.

  Audric and Ludivine, watching from the hills.

  Ilmaire and Ingrid, hopefully brought to their knees by the magnificence of her power.

  Her eyelids drooped, her vision flickering. She was not a girl shivering with rain and anger—no, she was a conduit. The world passed through her body, and by doing so, it grew sharper, bolder. It listened to her will and obeyed. She breathed, and it breathed along with her. She shook, then held fast; so too did the wall of her creation. She moved her fingers, like stroking the spine of an upset hound, and watched the water diminish.

  At last, when the wave had flattened and the sea calmed, debris strewn across the shores and the call of gulls returning tentatively to the air, Rielle lowered her aching arms. The movement made her cry out, her muscles stiff and her blood rushing painfully back down to her fingers. She longed to collapse against Atheria’s neck and let the godsbeast take her to some quiet mountaintop cave, as she had done that first day when she had saved Rielle from death, and wrap her in the nest of her wings.

  But instead she whispered into Atheria’s sea-soaked mane, “Take me to Audric, my dear.”

  Atheria obeyed, diving back down toward the city. Rielle watched through watering eyes as the drenched streets neared. Buildings of white stone tucked into the mountains; sharp, narrow towers piercing low clouds; rooftop gardens, elaborate and green in the diminishing mist; trees pelted flat by wind and rain. The sky was dark, and lanterns flickered tentatively to life throughout the city. Hours had passed, Rielle realized with a dim note of alarm. The edges of her body returned to her—her fingers wind-chapped and swollen, her mouth parched and sour.

  They broke through a mist of cloud and approached a wide, flat stone plaza near what appeared to be the castle’s main gates. Hundreds of people had gathered, crammed into every spare inch of space. They followed Atheria’s progress, and as she descended, the crowd’s wild roar grew deafening.

  But Rielle, shivering with cold, could only concentrate on one thing—Audric hurrying toward her, and Ludivine just behind him. A group of uniformed soldiers followed them, including Prince Ilmaire and Commander Ingrid.

  Rielle tightened her raw, aching fingers in the tangles of Atheria’s mane. “If they try to hurt us again, we will show them no mercy.”

  Atheria whickered doubtfully, and the moment her hooves touched stone, the crowd pressing close around them, Rielle dismounted and dropped unsteadily to the ground. Ingrid’s soldiers directed the crowd away from her, giving her and Atheria room, and as Prince Ilmaire approached, Rielle lifted her chin and prepared a cutting remark that she hoped would erase the smile from his face.

  But she did not have the chance to so much as say his name.

  Before she could, he knelt before her, bowing his head, and the others around him followed suit—the royal guard, the soldiers who had threatened them in the village hills, a group of people in elaborate robes whom Rielle assumed were Borsvall’s Grand Magisters.

  Last to bow was Commander Ingrid, with a murderous glare—but bow she did, as the gathered crowd cheered in response. They flung their sodden scarves and hair ribbons upon the plaza’s stone. Along the rooftops surrounding the plaza, spilling out of windows and onto terraces, they stamped their feet and waved their arms, reaching for Rielle as if desperate to win even a glance from her.

  Rielle turned to Audric and found him smiling down at her. Only at the sight of his face did she realize how exhausted she was, how close to collapsing. She had stopped a tidal wave in its tracks. She had tamed the sea.

  She laughed a little, breathless, and when Audric and Ludivine moved to kneel like the others, she shook her head and took their hands in hers.

  “Not you,” she said. “Never you.”

  Then, with Audric and Ludivine at her side, her fingers laced through their own, Rielle lifted her arms to the sky and listened with satisfaction as the crowd’s cries of adulation shook the stone beneath her feet.

  • • •

  Rielle dreamed of waves as big as the world—endless waves, with voices that yawned and wailed.

  She walked through them easily, a child splashing through puddles. They subsided at her touch. She dwarfed them. She towered over the world. She held it, curious, in her palm.

  Then Ludivine’s voice—soft, regretful—coaxed her awake, back to the spacious apartment to which Ilmaire had escorted them hours before. They had bathed and rested, all of them sprawled together in the apartment’s largest bed, and now Ludivine was speaking, brushing Rielle’s damp hair back from her face.

  We must go quickly, she said. We cannot linger here. I’ve had time to read the air while you slept, and now I understand.

  Go? Rielle raised herself up, rubbing her eyes. Go where?

  Ilmaire’s coming, and Ingrid, and an escort of guards.

  Rielle tensed. “Audric,” she said, shaking him gently. “Wake up.”

  There’s no need to fear them. You’ve won their loyalty. Ludivine paused. Well. Truthfully, Ingrid’s is still to be won. But she won’t make another move against us. Not for now. But, Rielle, the Gate… Ludivine’s fear crowded the edges of Rielle’s mind like a new, gathering storm. That wave, it was of the Gate. And more waves will come, more storms, as each day passes.

  A slow-crawling chill pushed Rielle fully awake. What do you mean?

  “Rielle?” Audric murmured, voice hoarse from sleep. “What is it?”

  I will tell you more, said Ludivine, and Audric as well, once we’re alone. But for now—we need a ship. Their fastest ship.

  Rielle touched Audric’s arm. “Lu says Ilmaire is coming, and Ingrid too. They’ll be here soon.” But Tal, Queen Genoveve, everyone at home, they’ll be worried, they’ll want us home at once.

  They will have to wait, Ludivine said firmly. We must visit the Gate as soon as possible and assess the damage my kindred have done to it. Before it’s too late. Before anything more disastrous happens.

  Rielle swallowed with difficulty. Before more angels escape?

  We cannot delay was Ludivine’s quiet reply.

  Then, a knock on the door. A guard announcing the arrival of Prince Ilmaire and Commander Ingrid.

  Rielle stood, wincing at the stiffness of her body. Still sluggish from the poppy tea Ilmaire’s servants had offered to soothe her abused muscles, she nevertheless managed an expression of supreme disdain as Ilmaire entered the room, Ingrid and four guards just behind him.

  “Prince Audric, Lady Rielle, Lady Ludivine.” Ilmaire smiled widely, his eyes bright and the color high in his cheeks. “I hope you’re feeling refreshed after a few hours’ rest.”

  Beside him, Ingrid’s shoulders sat tensely, her jaw square.

  Audric’s anger had always been a subtle thing, tightly controlled, but Rielle heard it thrum in his voice nevertheless. “Your servants,” he said, his eyes snapping dark fire, “are to be commended for their hospitality and care.”

  Ilmaire seemed oblivious to the danger
ous edge in Audric’s voice. “I don’t know what to say. I feel as if I’ve wandered into a tale of the First Age, when the magic of the empirium burned brightly in all things.”

  “This is not a children’s tale, Ilmaire,” Ingrid muttered, with the air of someone who had said that very thing countless times before. “This is reality.”

  “It is not a reality I’ve ever known.” Ilmaire looked to Rielle, wonder soft on his face. “Lady Rielle, is there any limit to this power you have?”

  “If there were,” said Rielle, “I certainly wouldn’t tell you about it.”

  Ingrid’s mouth thinned, but before she could reply, Audric stepped forward. “We must speak of what happened yesterday.”

  At last, Ilmaire’s expression dimmed. “I know. It was a rash decision, and an abominable one, made by people who have been frightened by what our kingdom has suffered in recent weeks and months, and have allowed that fear to rule their minds.”

  He didn’t look at Ingrid as he spoke, but a rope of tension pulled tight between them. Rielle braced herself, preparing for it to break.

  But a beat of silence passed, and then another. “I hope,” Ilmaire said, “that you’ll allow us a second chance.”

  “You attacked us,” Rielle said. “We’d done nothing to you.”

  Don’t do this, Ludivine admonished. We have more important things to address.

  Rielle ignored her, glaring at each of the royal siblings in turn. Ilmaire met her gaze, his own steady and sad, but Ingrid looked away, her sharp, pale cheeks coloring though her mouth remained frozen in a scowl.

  “Is that what the mighty nation of Borsvall stands for?” Rielle continued. “Lashing out at innocent visitors when you feel frightened? No wonder your kingdom’s in such a state. You’re all blindingly stupid.”

  Audric said quietly, “Rielle, this isn’t helping anyone.”