Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  “How did you find out?” she asked, her voice flat and deadly.

  “My family’s spies are better than yours,” Ludivine replied, “and yours are sloppy.”

  At the mention of House Sauvillier, Obritsa set her jaw.

  “What do you want, then?”

  Ludivine’s mind stumbled, and without warning, her thoughts, still agitated from Corien’s abuse, grew black with despair.

  What did she want?

  What she wanted was to feel something again, to fit inside a body again, to look at Rielle and Audric and not feel those terrible flutterings of fear in their minds—fear of her kind, and of her in particular, no matter how much they claimed to love her, and did love her.

  The truth was that she wasn’t like them, that she had lied to them, that she was an intruder living in the corpse of their beloved childhood friend. That was a reality that could not be undone, but if she could be remade, if she was reborn—not as an angel, but as a creature like them, as human—then perhaps their fear would diminish over time.

  And she herself would taste again, and see again, and feel again—not simply the gray imitation of sense and color that currently defined her existence.

  Existence. She swallowed against a bitter turn of breath. A kind word for what she endured every day. She fought the urge to touch her scar.

  “This city is rotten with dark workings,” she said to Obritsa, fighting to regain control of her unsettled mind. “The missing children, the murders. I’ve tried to investigate what it means and have reached many dead ends. All I’ve managed to uncover is that three members of your Magisterial Council are involved in the abductions, and that the children are being taken to somewhere in the Villmark, in the region known as Shirshaya.”

  Obritsa raised a cool eyebrow. “Oh, yes? And which magisters are these?”

  “Magisters Yeravet, Kravnak, and Vorlukh.”

  Obritsa shook her head, her mind struggling to make sense of these revelations. She rose from her chair, arms crossed, and made her way slowly toward her desk, which sat against the southern wall of windows.

  “These are incredible accusations,” she said. “Why should I believe any of them?”

  “Because they are true,” Ludivine replied. “And because I know many things I shouldn’t. I know you are a tool of the revolution, raised by Sasha Rhyzov in the lower districts of the city of Yarozma. I know they cut the wings out of your back and regrew your skin. I know they want you to abduct Rielle and use her as a weapon of your revolution, which I find hysterical, since Rielle could flatten this city with a flick of her wrist, if she wanted to.”

  Obritsa listened, her back to Ludivine, and pressed a tiny brass button on the underside of her desk.

  Ludivine nearly rolled her eyes. If she had been a human, perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed the movement, and Obritsa would have gotten away with the deception. But Ludivine could feel the girl’s mind working ten steps ahead, planning her attack. The button had triggered a channel of active earthshaker magic, and soon Obritsa’s devoted guard, Artem, a disguised revolutionary himself, would burst into the room, ready to kill whoever had threatened his charge.

  Ludivine reclined in her chair, awaiting his arrival.

  “What a fascinating tableau you’ve painted, Lady Ludivine.” Obritsa leaned back against her desk. “Please, do go on.”

  “I know what you saw the other night in the courtyard of that school,” Ludivine continued. “You saw a child kill his teacher and then climb inside a carriage that bore him away into the night. You tried to follow, but couldn’t. Shadows confused your vision and blocked your passage, making it seem as though the carriage was traveling much more swiftly than it should have been able to. You thought perhaps this was shadowcaster magic. It wasn’t. It was the work of angels, fogging your mind, misaligning your senses.”

  Ludivine paused, watching Obritsa’s face. The girl’s control was magnificent; she gave nothing away, though her mind was roaring as Ludivine’s words helped her recover memory after horrible memory.

  “I know Grand Magister Yeravet grabbed you, drugged you with widow’s tears, and returned you to your rooms,” Ludivine went on. “You woke up remembering nothing but echoes. The Grand Magister told your guard that he had found you drunk on the street, that you had been sneaking out to taverns. I know you’ve been enduring terrible nightmares. They are the product of your mind screaming at you to remember the events of that night.”

  At last, Obritsa’s control cracked. She clutched her stomach, her eyes glittering.

  She managed one word. “How?”

  Then the door to her rooms flew open. The air crackled with dirt-smelling, wood-smelling earthshaker magic. Obritsa’s guard, Artem, raised his staff, his eyes blazing. He was an earthshaker, an elemental who sympathized with the revolution and had been recruited by its leaders to guard and protect Obritsa. His devotion to his duty, to Obritsa herself, was pure and clean as fire.

  Ludivine sighed, suddenly weary.

  Calm yourself, she told him, and watched as he froze, all the aggression draining from his body.

  Walk toward the terrace, she continued, and proceed outside.

  He lowered his staff to the floor and obeyed. When he opened the terrace doors, a blast of snow and freezing wind gusted a stack of papers off Obritsa’s desk.

  Climb over the railing, Ludivine instructed tiredly, appreciating the usefulness of her angelic blood even as she despised its brutality. Throw yourself over it.

  Artem walked across the terrace and began to climb over the railing.

  “Stop!” Obritsa cried, rushing forward, and Ludivine felt the love rise swiftly inside the girl’s body, ferocious and desperate.

  “Leave him,” ordered Ludivine. “One more step, and I’ll tell him to keep going.”

  Obritsa shivered in the cold, looking childlike at last. “What are you?”

  “I’m an angel,” Ludivine said, “and I believe others of my kind are building something in the far north, in the Villmark. I need you to go see what it is and report back to me.”

  So many questions arose in Obritsa’s mind that Ludivine felt weighed down by them.

  At last the girl managed to speak. “Why can’t you do that?”

  “I can’t leave Rielle. I can’t endanger myself and therefore risk her safety. And because whenever I try to look north, something stops me. An obstruction. A taunt. I believe angels are involved in this, and if I try to get too close to them, they’ll sense me and stop me. They’ll be on the lookout for me. But not for you, if you move quickly and carefully.”

  Ludivine rose because she could no longer sit still. Giving voice to these things left her feeling frayed, restless, and every moment she spent away from Rielle was a torment she could hardly endure.

  “I know this is overwhelming,” she told Obritsa. “I also know you are more than capable of not only understanding what I’m saying, but also carrying out this task I’m giving you.”

  Obritsa glanced over her shoulder to see Artem standing near the railing, motionless.

  “Why should I do anything to help you?” she asked.

  “Because one of your own magisters drugged you in order to keep his secret,” Ludivine replied. “He, and the others, are allowing children to be abducted and taken for reasons they don’t understand. All they know is that they have been promised power. They have no loyalty to you, to their kingdom, to the people they serve. They are loyal only to their own desires. You may very well be safer in the Villmark than you are in your own palace.”

  “You can’t possibly be engineering this simply to protect me,” Obritsa said scathingly. “Or are angels as stupid as you are cruel?”

  Ludivine smiled, glad to hear the girl’s fire. She would need it.

  “Of course it isn’t the only reason, or even the primary one. If you die after helping m
e, it will cause me no grief. I’m asking you because I can’t do it myself, and because your marque power will carry you faster than I could travel. And because whatever’s happening in the north could and will affect all of us, if it is allowed to continue.”

  She hesitated, then decided Obritsa deserved to know. “The Gate is falling, Obritsa. There are many angels in the world, and more will come, if Rielle cannot repair it. They are hiding something in the north, and I need you to find out what that is. Not for my sake, nor for Rielle’s, and certainly not for the horrible man who raised you or for his revolution. But for the world. For the entirety of your race.”

  Ludivine felt Obritsa trying to wrap her mind around these words. “And if I refuse to help you?”

  “Then I will slip into your mind as well as Artem’s,” Ludivine replied, “and send you both plummeting over that railing. I will forge a note, a confessional, in which you betray all your revolutionary friends. And I will smooth over any ripples of doubt, until everyone is convinced of your cowardice.”

  After a moment, during which Ludivine could feel Obritsa’s fury swelling quietly—like Rielle’s tidal wave, an immense force barely restrained—Obritsa nodded briskly. “I will help you,” she said, “because you have forced me into it. Every day I will resent and hate you for it. Every day I will pray that you do not die, but instead are forced to live forever in misery for what you’ve done.”

  Forever in misery. Ludivine nearly burst out laughing. If only the girl knew. “I don’t blame you. And for my part, I will pray that you come to see the cruelty of those who have raised you and are able to break free of their chains. You deserve better than they have given you.”

  She glanced at the terrace. Come inside.

  Artem obeyed, shivering, his shaggy brown hair white with snow. He sank onto the carpet, bracing his body on hands and knees.

  Obritsa ran to him, pulled off her dressing gown, and threw it around his body.

  “Artem, Artem, my dear.” She cupped her guard’s square-jawed face, wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “You’re here. You’re safe.”

  Then, without warning, violence exploded through Ludivine’s mind, accompanied by a furious succession of images—pines weighed down by piles of snow, a half-buried village. Tossed flames. Burning flesh.

  “He’s here,” she whispered, no longer entirely in Obritsa’s apartments. Part of her was in the mountains, her mind racing to find the source of these terrible images. “He’s there. He’s hurting them. Oh, God.”

  “Who?” Obritsa stood. “Tell me at once.”

  “His name is Corien. The most powerful of my kind.” Ludivine searched the far reaches of her thoughts and saw the truth. “He is in the mountains, at a small village. Polestal. He is forcing the elementals there to hurt each other. They are burning.”

  And suddenly she understood what was happening. It was a trap; it was bait. He had grown impatient, so he would try every method he could think of until Rielle relented.

  But she wouldn’t relent. Ludivine wouldn’t allow her to, even if she had to sit stubbornly in Rielle’s mind for the rest of her life, controlling her every movement. A sentinel doomed to endless duty.

  “You must take me to Polestal now,” Ludivine ordered, clutching her aching arm. The blightblade scar was throbbing as if freshly made.

  Obritsa’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Because he is doing this to force Rielle’s hand,” she replied, fighting the slow spread of her terror, “and if he succeeds, we’re all dead.”

  28

  Eliana

  “I have heard tell of beasts that run wild in the night. Horrors from children’s stories, thrust suddenly into the waking world. It does not surprise me, that now we must add monsters to the list of terrors wreaking havoc upon our world. I’m convinced we did something terrible, long ago, something ancient and unforgivable, and that these interminable years of war are punishment for it.”

  —Collection of stories written by refugees in occupied Ventera, curated by Hob Cavaserra

  In the city of Karlaine, Eliana could not sleep.

  She lay on the hard, cold ground, under a pale dawn sky slashed with black pines. They had made camp in a small cluster of vacant buildings on the outskirts of Karlaine, slipping into the city in small groups of two or three, so as not to attract undue attention. The atmosphere in Karlaine was already tense and watchful. The smoke from Caebris stained the horizon, and the explosions had surely been audible to those living in the city.

  Eliana closed her eyes. Once, she had been good at sleeping, no matter the time of day or her state of mind. Those days were long gone, and as she lay there, her spine wedged against a tree root, legs and arms tightly crossed, her mind filled with the sounds of battle.

  Explosions, possibly of her own making.

  Wood shattering, watchtowers collapsing with a groan.

  The crackle of flames, the clash of swords, the snick of a blade catching against flesh, the cries of bullets hitting bodies and bodies falling to the ground.

  The opening and shutting of doors down an endless hallway—faster, harder, closer. Relentless.

  Corien’s voice in the dark: There you are.

  And Jessamyn, watching her curiously: Nothing’s finished.

  Eliana turned onto her side, tucking her thrumming hands close against her chest. Her castings had not quieted since the raid of Caebris, and she still couldn’t be sure if they had caused those initial explosions, or if Patrik had abruptly decided to use more bombardiers than just the one, or if, perhaps, Eliana had been imagining the number of explosions she had counted. If she could trust her own mind.

  She clenched her fists, ignoring the pain of her healing burns, and closed her eyes. It was an odd, unsettling feeling, to love and hate a thing so passionately and in such equal measure. These castings she had made with her own hands.

  These weapons she did not trust, imprisoning her.

  She tried to remind herself of a few simple, glad truths.

  In total, they had saved nine prisoners from the Fidelia laboratory.

  Of the refugees who had traveled aboard the Streganna, more than three-quarters of them had survived the battle, and those who hadn’t yet left for the city now rested peacefully in this copse of trees and in the little buildings nearby—a stable, a feed shed, two tired cottages, one of which was inhabited by an old man and his husband, who had soap and potatoes and had at once set to work gathering well water and starting a fire.

  Jessamyn was alive, and Patrik too.

  Harkan slept beside her, curled up on his side and lightly snoring.

  But still, Eliana could not sleep. She sat up, rubbing the back of her neck. She could feel the faint echo of Corien’s fingers there, groping and grabbing. His hand in her hair, his voice unraveling against her nape.

  Her stomach churned; her throat tasted terrible, like dirt and blood and old food. She pushed herself to her feet and wandered camp until she found Patrik, on watch at a low stone wall, facing west. It formed one side of a broad paddock that had long gone untended—scattered with rocks, overgrown and empty.

  “We’ll have to leave by noon,” he said quietly as she came up beside him. “They’ll come for us soon enough.”

  “We killed all of them,” she said, remembering. Once the prisoners were away, she and Jessamyn had returned through the auxiliary door and cut down every physician they could find, every dead-eyed adatrox blundering through the rubble.

  “Perhaps,” Patrik conceded, “perhaps not. We did well, that’s true. You and Jessamyn were quite a team. But the world crawls with the soldiers of the Empire. And I don’t trust these woods, these fields.” He waved an arm across the horizon. “I keep waiting to see one of the cruciata jump out from the shadows as the one that attacked me did, years ago.”

  “From what you’ve told me,” Eliana sa
id dully, “that seems unlikely.”

  “Angels creating monsters of women and armies of monsters,” Patrik muttered. “I don’t understand them. Why do they hate us so completely?”

  “A long story.”

  He shot her a sharp glance, watching for a long moment. “I suppose you won’t tell me?”

  “Once I’ve had a bath and some food, I’ll tell you the whole sordid tale.”

  “I look forward to that. Meantime, we’ll leave the refugees with their families. They’ll blend in well enough, even after having been gone for months. But the prisoners we’ll have to take with us when we leave in the morning. Their presence wouldn’t go unnoticed here.”

  Eliana placed her hands flat in the dirt. Its dry, hard texture was no comfort, and yet she longed to lie down in it and never rise again. “Where will we go?”

  “There’s a city about thirty miles south of here. Briserra. It’s much larger than Karlaine and has a decent Red Crown presence. My friend Edge runs an inn, of sorts. The prisoners will be safe there.”

  “And us?”

  Patrik shrugged. “I don’t know where you’ll go. You and Harkan have done what I asked you to do. If you leave this very moment, I won’t cry about it. Well. I’ll cry a little, to lose Harkan. As for me and Jessamyn, Gerren, and the rest, we’ll go where we’re needed. And we’ll keep going until we’re either no longer needed or we die.”

  “I suppose that’s it, isn’t it? That’s all that’s left to us.” Eliana considered sitting on the wall, but that required too much effort. Exhaustion pressed down upon her, gray and endless, but she knew that if she returned to Harkan and tried to sleep, she would fail. “We fight until we can’t fight anymore, and then we die, and none of it will matter anyway. Nothing’s changing.”

  Patrik was quiet for a long time. “When you and Simon came through Crown’s Hollow,” he said at last, “it wasn’t about getting Navi home to Astavar, was it? Or even, really, about finding your mother?”

  Eliana laughed a little. “It was for me. I thought that’s what I was doing, anyway.”