Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  Jodoc’s gaze cut sharply to Ludivine. “Nor can it be easily extracted. We have worked for many centuries to close off those parts of our minds, thanks to the teachings left to us by the angel Aryava. And if you move against us, Lady Ludivine, I will blow this horn”—he gestured at the horn of bone he wore at his waist—“and every member of my order who possesses this information will hear me and, without hesitation, will ingest a poison that each of them keeps on their person, and so will I. We will die in a matter of seconds, and the knowledge we hold will die with us. The marques in our employ will travel the world and bring the rest of our order into deep hiding, and you will never find us.”

  “You would rather die than help us?” Ingrid said tightly. “You would sooner leave the Gate’s defense incomplete?”

  “I would rather die than have sacred information fall into the hands of an angel I have no reason to trust,” Jodoc replied.

  A tense silence filled the room.

  At last, Ludivine said smoothly, “Very well. I will attempt no such thing.”

  Rielle threw up her hands. “So we’re meant to wander the world, with no direction whatsoever, and somehow find seven hidden castings before the Gate falls?”

  “We will watch the Gate closely,” Jodoc replied, “and give you information if the situation requires it. But until then, Lady Rielle, you have proven yourself to be untrustworthy and unpredictable. And I therefore don’t care to make your burden any lighter. If you are to wield the castings of the saints to whose legacy I and my companions have devoted our lives, you will have to show me you are worthy of wielding them.

  “And I must note,” he added, glancing at Audric, “that you aren’t beginning this task aimlessly. The first piece of information you need, to find the casting of Saint Katell, lies in the castle Baingarde. I suggest you leave the Sunderlands and return home to Celdaria as quickly as you can.”

  With that, Jodoc and the other Obex exited the room, leaving Rielle’s group of five alone. Ilmaire walked to the window and looked out over the moonlit forest. Ingrid sat heavily by the fire and filled a plain metal goblet with wine.

  “Anyone else need a drink or three?” she mumbled.

  Ludivine raised her hand. “Yes, please.”

  “Do you know what he meant by that?” Rielle asked Audric. “What’s in Baingarde?”

  “I don’t know. But Mother might.” He sat beside her, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Are you well enough to leave tomorrow?”

  Rielle smiled wryly. “Does that matter?”

  Audric’s gaze was soft. “It does to me.”

  She could not bear to look at him for one more second without touching him, so she kissed him, softly, beneath the murmur of the others’ voices. But that was not enough. Restless, exhausted, she knew of only one thing in the world that could grant her the peace she craved, and it was not a single kiss, no matter how lovely.

  She rose, Audric’s hand in hers, and led him quietly down the hall to a small, clean room that stood empty, faintly lit by the night sky. Once inside, Rielle closed the door and kissed him again, harder, until she could barely breathe, until he stopped treating her as if she was made of glass. He turned her away from him and pressed her gently against the door, and Rielle reached back to tug him closer, impatient. He kissed her neck and raised her skirts, and for those glorious blazing minutes while he moved inside her, one hand teasing between her legs and his voice hoarse and urgent in her hair, Rielle did not feel like a girl upon whose shoulders the fate of the world rested.

  She felt, simply, like a girl lucky enough to know what it was to be loved, and she clung to that feeling as fiercely as she could, until Audric’s murmured words and tireless hands pushed her past her lingering fears, and she could think no more.

  10

  Eliana

  “The importance of mental intimacy during the forging of one’s casting cannot be overstated. You must treat these hours as the beginning of your new life. It is a rebirth. It is a transformation. Into your casting you must pour everything you carry inside you—even the darkness, even the cruelty, even the parts of yourself you wish you could cut away and burn.”

  —On Castings: A Complete Studyby Eko Kaarat, renowned Astavari metalmaster

  As Eliana stepped inside the Forge of Vintervok, the scents of smoke and oil filled her lungs, and her chest constricted around a swell of memory.

  Before war had come to Ventera, before her years as the Dread, she had loved the stories of the Old World as fiercely as Remy still did—stories of the saints, the godsbeasts, and the magic that had filled the world before the Blood Queen’s Fall shattered it.

  Every year, she had visited the Forge in Orline with her parents on Saint Grimvald’s naming day and murmured the Metal Rite alongside the other visitors—tourists come to marvel at the Forge’s architecture; those who considered the old legends to be simply that, and tossed their prayers casually; and true followers of the saints, like Remy, who believed that the stories about the Old World were as real as the air in their lungs.

  As Eliana herself had once believed, before she first donned her Dread mask and began shedding the fanciful skin of her childhood.

  And now? Eliana thought, walking through the starkly decorated halls of Vintervok’s Forge. Now what do I believe?

  Before the invading Empire forces had destroyed the Forge in Orline, it had looked something like this—all right angles and gleaming dark surfaces, stark iron filigree barring every window. Artwork portraying Saint Grimvald in his pewter armor and fiery orange cloak hung alongside landscapes of war—battlefields glinting with swords, soldiers bearing brilliant bronze castings, bright-winged angels falling from storming skies with metal shards protruding from their chests.

  One painting boasted a particularly dramatic spectacle. A dragon, gray-scaled and white-bellied, a mane of dark hair cresting its neck, rode toward a blinding door of light, which hovered just above a great chasm in the earth. Water surged up through the chasm, churning with foam. Saint Grimvald himself rode the dragon’s back, his hammer raised to meet a regiment of swarming angels. Each armored angel carried a sword; each of their exquisite faces blazed with rage.

  Eliana hurried past, averting her eyes. Like every child she had ever known, Remy loved the godsbeasts, and the ice dragons of Borsvall had always been his favorite.

  Give him time, Simon had told her.

  But there wasn’t enough time in the world for them to come back from what she had done. Eliana felt the certainty of that reverberate through her body with every step.

  Their escort—a scholar named Ikari—led them deep into the Forge’s honeycomb structure to the enormous central forging room. Shallow steps sloped down into a circular pit at the heart of the room, where a wide coal hearth blazed day and night. A stone statue of Saint Grimvald stood in the hearth, his hammer raised toward the ceiling, where a series of windows allowed ventilation. A dozen others milled about the room—scholars dressed in plain floor-length coats and ceremonial acolytes wearing the more elaborate and old-fashioned dark-gray robes.

  Ikari, a petite, plain-faced woman with kind eyes and pale-brown skin, led Eliana and Simon toward the hearth. As she did so, everyone gathered in the room paused in their work—tending the hearth fire, tidying the prayer candles, scrubbing the smoke stains from the floors—and turned to stare.

  Ikari cleared her throat. “You all have tasks to complete? As does Lady Eliana.”

  The scholars and acolytes quickly resumed working, the air thick with their sudden, focused silence.

  Below the crackle of the hearth flames, Simon murmured, “We can leave, if you want.”

  Eliana threw a glare at him. “I don’t relish the idea of sitting around Dyrefal twiddling my thumbs for the rest of my life.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Then stop trying to make me feel better.”

 
“I’d never presume to do such a thing. I’d just rather you not embarrass yourself in front of these people.”

  “Embarrass me? Or embarrass you?”

  “If you’re going to panic, you shouldn’t let them see it.”

  Eliana gritted her teeth. “I’m not panicking.”

  Ikari smiled warmly at her. “I thought I would show you around the forging hearth, my lady, and familiarize you with the traditional process. I hope you will forgive us our excitement. We have studied this practice in great detail, of course, but only in theory. This will be our first time to witness an actual forging.”

  Eliana nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The curious gazes of the people around the room sat upon her skin like hot coals.

  “It is important for the person who will use the casting to carry out each step of the forging process themselves,” Ikari began. “We will be here to guide you, of course, but it is your hand that must hold the hammer, your arms that must pump the bellows.”

  Eliana followed Ikari around the hearth. “I understand.”

  “First, you will use the bellows to pump air through the tuyere and feed the flames. Once they are at their purest heat, you will place each piece of metal you selected into the crucible”—Ikari pointed at a cylindrical vat of stone quietly cooking in the embers—“and melt them down. Their Majesties have told us you may have your pick of artifacts from the temple archives, my lady. Anything you wish to add to the mixture is yours. The archives include relics from as long ago as the Second Age—”

  “I won’t raid your archives for my own purposes,” Eliana interrupted.

  “But, my lady—”

  “I won’t use relics. I’ll use scraps only. Bits of refuse. Metal left over from your own workings. The finery of precious artifacts would seem ill-fitting on me.”

  Ikari inclined her head. “Very well, my lady. I will take you to the scrap room after we’re finished here, and you may peruse our stores. I suggest holding each piece in your hand and, as you examine it, listening to what your heart tells you.”

  A response to that came to Eliana’s mind at once. Her heart was telling her she should have stayed in Orline. That this was futile, that Navi would die before she was able to help her.

  That she was frightened of what would become of the self she knew, once she held a casting in her hands.

  But she bit the inside of her lip and followed Ikari’s slow progress around the hearth. Simon, a silent shadow, followed closely behind her.

  “Have you given any thought as to what kind of casting you would like to fashion?” Ikari asked.

  In fact, Eliana had known what the shape of her casting would be from the moment the idea first occurred to her.

  “I have,” she replied. “I would like two identical pendants—small, thin, smooth-edged.” With her right finger, she drew a circle on her left palm, to illustrate the size. “I would like to wear one in each of my palms, to be held in place by slender chains.”

  Ikari nodded, then gestured at a young acolyte, who was hovering nearby. The boy hurried over with a pen and a curling leaf of paper.

  “We can easily design such molds for you, my lady, and have them ready by tomorrow evening.” Ikari moved to a stone shelf and quickly sketched out a design. “Like so?”

  Eliana considered the sketched hand. A round disc sat in the palm, with thin chains connected to it in a cross shape. One chain hooked around the middle finger. Another wrapped around the back of the hand. A third chain connected the bottom of the pendant to the final, fourth chain that would form a bracelet around her wrist.

  “Yes,” she said, pleased at the elegant design. “Yes, that’s exactly what I imagined.”

  Simon peered over her shoulder. “They won’t be easy to remove.”

  “Good. I don’t want them to be. I’ll sleep more easily knowing my hands are bound. That I won’t wake from a nightmare to find I’ve torn down the castle while I slept.”

  “We do not fear you, my lady,” Ikari said softly. “You saved us from invasion. Astavar still stands free because of you.”

  “Some of you fear me, and you should. I do.”

  Ikari’s gaze was gentler than Eliana felt she deserved. “You mentioned you have a personal artifact to add to the mixture?”

  Eliana removed her necklace and gave it to Ikari without hesitation.

  Ikari turned the necklace over, examining it. Her eyes widened. “Oh, my lady. This is—”

  “I know. The Lightbringer. My father, apparently.” The words felt brittle on Eliana’s tongue. They were a betrayal to Ioseph Ferracora; she wished them unsaid. “Well, and he’s long dead, isn’t he? I don’t think he’ll care if I melt down his necklace.”

  “No, my lady. This is not the Lightbringer.” Ikari pointed to a series of markings on the back of the necklace, near the bottom rim—which Eliana had of course noticed before but had never deciphered. “This is the mark of the metalmaster artisan who crafted this necklace. The three slanting lines, and the arching half-moon underneath, mark it as the work of an artisan of the royal house of Lysleva. And the markings below that—Borsvallic script. Numbers.” She squinted. “From the year 999 of the Second Age. The year before the Fall.”

  A few scholars and acolytes had gathered, quietly crowding close for a look.

  Ikari, eyes bright, pointed at the figure riding the winged horse. “And this, my lady, is the Blood Queen.”

  Eliana frowned. “But the Lightbringer rode a chavaile into battle. That’s what Remy told me. And there was a statue at the eastern edge of Orline that depicted the Lightbringer on that very godsbeast.”

  “Yes, by all surviving accounts, the Lightbringer rode a chavaile into battle against the angels,” Ikari agreed. “But before that, the chavaile did not belong to him. It belonged to the Blood Queen, as much as a godsbeast can belong to anyone. In the two years before her death, this image appeared on jewelry, armor, and castings across the kingdom of Celdaria. Across the entire world. We have one such surviving artifact in our archives, in fact.” Ikari glanced up at Eliana, her expression one of pure delight. “I can show you, my lady, so you can see what a clearer engraving of this symbol looks like.”

  Eliana, her mouth gone sour, pointed at the battered line of script arcing across the bottom of her pendant. “And this? What does this say?”

  “It is an ancient Borsvallic dialect.” Ikari’s voice was reverent. “I am not fluent, but I know this phrase, at least. It says, May the Queen’s light guide you.”

  The Sun Queen’s prayer. As Eliana stared at the necklace, her thoughts filled with a memory that was not her own: the beautiful woman from the vision Zahra had given her. A woman in black-and-crimson armor, standing on a blood-soaked battlefield, kissing the Emperor.

  She did not look at the necklace again.

  • • •

  The next night, Eliana and Simon returned to the Forge, where the fire of the hearth still burned.

  The three pieces of scrap metal Eliana had selected from the Forge supply waited for her at the hearth—a piece of brass piping, a thick copper chain, a chipped bronze bell.

  Beside them was her necklace, sitting innocuously by the other scraps as though it hadn’t been engraved with the visage of an evil, traitorous bitch.

  Ikari approached, her hair gathered into a tight bun, her face scrubbed clean. She wore plain, utilitarian clothing, a heavy apron, thick gloves.

  Eliana herself would wear no such attire; the traditional forging process did not allow for it. The risk required of the elemental was thought to enhance the connection with their casting, and Eliana had decided to keep to that tradition—much to Simon’s irritation.

  He stood behind her, his tense presence pulling at her like an angry tide. She relished his anger. It sharpened her grief at Remy’s continued silence, left her feeling hard and bright, like one of
her grinning blades.

  “Are you ready, my lady?” Ikari asked.

  “Nearly,” Eliana replied airily. She was already beginning to sweat in the hot, still air. Light as it was, the gown she wore clung to her skin. So she peeled it off, shimmying free of the cloying fabric until she stood in only her boots and thin shift.

  Ikari seemed unperturbed, though the nearby young acolytes gaped as if Eliana had decided to forge her casting while standing on her head.

  She looked back at Simon, silently daring him to reproach her, but instead he took off his own coat, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, then folded both her gown and his coat into a neat pile and moved them aside. The light from the hearth fire made the lattice of scars on his sweat-slicked forearms gleam.

  Eliana looked quickly away from them. “Now I’m ready.”

  Ikari gestured at the bellows. “Then, my lady, I ask that you begin to feed the flames.”

  Eliana obeyed, pushing down the dark lever of the bellows pump and listening to the subsequent hiss as the tuyere fed air into the hearth. The flames snapped and popped, blooming. She pushed the lever again, and a third time, a fourth. So close to the fire, the heat enveloped her like a second shimmering skin. Sweat dripped down her back, her neck, her forehead; her nostrils burned from the smoke, and her watering eyes itched terribly.

  With each pumped breath of air, the heat became more unbearable, and her instinct screamed at her to move away. It was too hot by these flames, too dangerous. She needed cool air; she needed water.

  Instead she gritted her teeth and pushed down the bellows pump.

  “‘A sword forged true with hammer and blade,’” she began reciting, “‘flies sure and swift.’” She raised the pump and pushed it down once more, timing her movements with the words of the Metal Rite. She had tried hard to put such prayers out of her mind over the years, but hadn’t been able to because Remy wouldn’t ever shut up about the goddamned saints.