Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  I spent the next few seconds trying to regain my bearings so I could pair my reply with a passably menacing glare. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “What’s troublin’ you, kid?”

  “You!” I blurted angrily. Regrettably, the blurting was immediately followed by spewing the last remnants of our overpriced—and, as it turned out, poisoned—stew. “You’re no bigger than I am. You ate the same food. So how come you always recover so much quicker than me?”

  “Ah,” she said, letting out another puff of smoke. “That.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  Ferius stared down at the smoking reed between her thumb and forefinger. For a moment I wondered if maybe that’s where the answer lay—that somehow smoking those rancid sticks was actually good for something other than stinking up the air. When she finally spoke though, the words came out so soft I thought maybe she hadn’t wanted me to hear them. “Arta forteize.”

  “The Argosi talent for resilience?”

  The only reason I recognised those words was because a few months before, Rosie—also known as the Path of Thorns and Roses—had explained the seven Argosi talents to me. It’s worth noting that until then, I’d never even known they existed, because my supposed mentor hadn’t bothered to mention them.

  “Guess the others do like to call it resilience,” Ferius said. “Me, I just think of it as trust.”

  “Trust?”

  She walked over to me, upright and perfectly balanced in contrast to the way I was shaking and shuddering like too little tree caught in too much wind. She closed her hand into a fist and showed it to me.

  “Please don’t hit me,” I said.

  “Sorry, kid. Only way the lesson works.”

  Ancestors, I hate her lessons sometimes.

  She didn’t hit me hard. In fact, at first she moved so slow I tried to turn in the direction of the blow. She sped up at the last instant to knock me in the jaw.

  “Ow!” I swore. “What kind of maetri punches her teysan right after he’s been poisoned?”

  Maetri is the word the Argosi use for teacher, and teysan means student. Ferius hates fancy terms like that, which is why I use them when she’s pissing me off.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Want to learn arta forteize or not?”

  I rubbed at my jaw. “Some lesson.”

  She patted my cheek. “Poor baby.”

  Wait… “Poor baby”? Ferius never used those words.

  Torian—it had been Torian who’d called me “poor baby” after she’d poked me with her fingernail.

  I managed to force my eyes open, just a little, taking in the hazy sight of what appeared to be a massive iron door at the end of a narrow passage. Torian placed a finger against the metal surface and began tracing a circle. After a couple of seconds I heard what could best be described as a shimmery tinkling, like the faint echo of distant bells or the chime you get from tracing the rim of a crystal goblet with a moistened finger. A moment later, a heavy click chased away the chimes, followed by the grinding of bolts sliding open.

  “Leave him and go,” Torian commanded the four marshals carrying me.

  I found myself propped up against the passage wall, held in place by Torian’s grip on my shoulders.

  “Lieutenant, shouldn’t we…?” one of the marshals began.

  “You should get out of here right now.” There was ice in her voice, along with something else, out of place for her. Trepidation? “Believe me, you don’t want the men and women in that room to wonder if you might recognise their faces.”

  The dull thud of boot heels against the passage floor marked a hurried cadence.

  “Who—” I began to ask, but Torian silenced me with a stinging slap against my cheek.

  No, hang on. Torian doesn’t slap people, she pokes them. The slap had been Ferius.

  “Pay attention to the lesson, kid,” my Argosi mentor warned. “Might save your life some day.”

  I batted her hand away, which felt a little rude on my part, but Ferius just grinned. “There, see?”

  “See what?”

  She reached out again. “Quit it!” I said, swatting her hand away a second time.

  “There. You did it again. What’s the lesson, kid?”

  “Find a better teacher?”

  For a third time she tried to slap my cheek, and for the third time I knocked her hand away.

  “What’s the lesson?” she asked again.

  Moments like these, neither petulance nor belligerence gets you anywhere with Ferius Parfax. She’ll just keep doing the same thing over and over until she gets the answer she wants. Or at least, the right question. “Who cares if I batted your hand away?”

  “What were you doing a minute ago?”

  “Puking my guts out and trying very hard not to fall flat on my face!”

  She nodded as if I’d just given the correct answer. “And now?”

  “Now I’m… Oh…”

  She took another puff from her smoking reed. “So what’s the lesson, kid?”

  Even after all that it took me a while to figure it out, but I got there eventually. “The paralysis. I thought it was still there, but as soon as I shifted my focus, I got steadier.”

  She snapped her smoking reed in two and held up both parts. “One end of this burns and there ain’t nothin’ either of us can do about that. But the other end only burns if you believe it’s on fire.” She dropped the two pieces to the ground and stamped out the smouldering one. “Most things in life are like that. Part of it’s in the body; part of it’s in the mind. Ain’t much you can do about the body, but the mind?” She beckoned to me. “Come a little closer, kid.”

  “You going to hit me again?”

  She grinned. “Only if you’re slow.”

  I took a step.

  “Good,” she said. “Now close your eyes and take another.”

  I sighed. By this point I’d just about forgotten what lesson she was trying to teach me, but I complied nonetheless. I closed my eyes and took a step. My boot heel landed on a rock that slid out from me. A second later I was on my butt, swearing at her.

  “Why’d you fall?” she asked.

  I pushed myself back up to my feet. “Because you made me close my eyes!”

  “Did I put the rock there?”

  “No, but you knew—”

  “So did you, kid. You saw the ground and you saw the rock. But when you closed your eyes, all you saw was darkness. Why not see the ground and the rock?”

  “Because that’s not how vision works?”

  She took my hand and held it up between us before placing a steel throwing card between my thumb and forefinger. “You feel this?”

  “Just barely.”

  She pointed to the tree behind her. “Reckon you can hit the knot in that tree?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You’ve hit harder targets.”

  I pinched the steel card tighter. I couldn’t even be sure my muscles were working. “Because the poison’s still affecting my nerves. I can’t feel the card to aim, just like my vision’s too blurry to focus on the tree and my muscles are too weak to throw properly.”

  Ferius snorted. “Kid, that tree ain’t but a few yards away. You know where it is, just like you know you’re holdin’ the card and you know your muscles can throw it.”

  I took a step to the right so she wasn’t in my way, then stared at the tree a second longer before pulling my arm back and hurling the card. It didn’t even leave my hand at first because I’d been pinching it too hard. When it did, it just flopped to the ground at my feet.

  “Again,” she said, handing me another card.

  I handed it back to her. “Show me first.”

  Ferius sighed, then snatched the card from my hand and—without even turning to look at the target—flung it behind her. The steel edge buried itself dead centre in the knot of the tree trunk.

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  She held up her hand in front of
me, rubbing her fingers together. “I can’t feel ’em any better than you can right now. Can’t hardly see neither. Arms feel like dead weights. That’s the poison in the body.” She tapped my temple with her finger. “The rest is in there, makin’ you believe you can’t throw the card because you can’t feel it. Foolin’ you into thinkin’ you can’t hit the tree just because you can’t see it properly, even though you know—you know—that tree’s right there waitin’ for you.”

  “So you just…”

  “Trust,” she said. “Resilience is just trustin’ your body. Gettin’ up even when your mind says you can’t get up again. Fightin’ back even when your fear tells you there’s no hope.” She put one palm over my eyes and with the other placed another steel card in my hand. “Trust your memory to tell you where the target is. Trust your hand to remember how to throw. And most of all, trust your heart to lead you straight.”

  I felt her hand come away as she stepped aside. I kept my eyes closed though, and even though I couldn’t feel my arm moving, I drew back and threw the card.

  “Well?” she asked then. “Ain’t you gonna look to see if you hit the target?”

  I turned away and went to get our packs so we could leave. “Reckon I’ll just trust I hit it,” I replied.

  I could hear the smile in her voice as she followed me. “Here endeth the lesson, kid.”

  I came back to myself then, just barely aware of Torian Libri hauling me into the chamber where I would soon find myself at the mercy of whoever waited inside. I kept falling in and out of consciousness, trapped beneath the palace where no one who gave a damn about my life or death could find me. The paralytic coating the fingernail Torian had cut me with was so strong that I couldn’t move a muscle—couldn’t so much as feel my face. I could hear just fine though.

  “Why is he smiling?” someone asked.

  5

  The Murmurers

  I awoke to a blinding light, a deadly threat and a most unexpected rescue.

  “We warned you, little Tori,” a woman’s gravelly voice said, sounding like a disapproving vulture circling above a rotting carcass in the sand.

  Heh. “Little Tori.” Can’t wait to call her that next time she has me arrested.

  “And I told you,” Little Tori countered, her tone somewhere between a birdsong and a razor blade, “that if you’d just let the spellslinger explain, none of this would be necessary.”

  “That is not the council’s way,” a deeper voice intoned. I imagined a self-important camel standing on its hind legs in the middle of the desert, about to begin a lengthy sermon on the noble nature of sand. “Disturbing murmurs have come to us about this one.”

  Odd choice of word. Almost sounded like he said… Oh, crap. The Murmurers!

  For months I’d been hearing rumours of a collection of high-ranking generals, spies and marshals operating out of the imperial palace. Every scrap of intelligence regarding potential threats to the empire went through them first, to be sifted, debated and finally, eliminated. These twelve men and woman had, so far as I could tell, no formal legal authority—though I’d uncovered passing references in the royal accounts to something called “The Imperial Council for Strategic Preparation.” Those in the know, however, referred to them as the Murmurers.

  Every time I’d brought up the possible existence of this shadowy group to Torian, she’d laughed in my face.

  “He’s an idiot,” she now declared. “A buffoon who trades in card tricks and clever quips. He’s no threat to the queen.”

  “The concern of this council goes beyond Ginevra’s person,” barked a new voice, thin and reedy like that of an angry meerkat popping up from its hole in the sand. “We serve the empire.”

  “Quite right,” the camel agreed.

  Why does this desert have to be so damned hot? I wondered. I kept wanting to roll over to get away from the six dancing suns in the sky overhead before they burned holes through my eyelids.

  Those aren’t suns, idiot. They must be lanterns, swaying from chains embedded in the ceiling. Pull yourself together. Use your arta forteize to shake off the poison like Ferius taught you, so you can get out of here!

  Right. Good plan. Which one’s arta forteize again?

  “Enough!” squawked the vulture. “There’s no point stretching this out. If the witness is to be believed…”

  There was a pause during which I got the sense she was referring to someone in the room.

  “We’ve no reason to doubt his testimony,” the meerkat hissed.

  “Even if we accept his evidence,” someone new—possibly a cobra or a particularly sibilant crocodile—added, “the danger to the empire is too great. We must act now, before the opportunity passes us by.”

  The vulture took over again. “Exactly. We all know the spellslinger is a wild card prone to making rash decisions based on his own petulant and dubious moral code. Worse, he’s got too much influence over the queen. So either we kill him now, or we… Actually, I can’t see an alternative.”

  “I vote in favour of the execution warrant,” the meerkat said.

  “Aye,” spat the camel.

  A few others—possibly two otters and some sort of singing ostrich—concurred in quick succession.

  Well, they all sound like fine, upstanding citizens, I thought. Guess I’d better start killing them.

  For the next few minutes, I paid little attention to their words—they were pretty much just taking turns pontificating on the necessity of eliminating me. Instead I focused on what their voices revealed about the room I was in. Each time one of them spoke, the sound came from a different direction. They had to be either standing or sitting all around me.

  My back was sore, so I was lying on something hard, but I distinctly remembered Torian catching me before I hit the floor. Also, I wasn’t cold; stone robs heat from your body faster than a chill in the air, so I must be lying on some kind of wooden table, likely in the centre of the chamber.

  They’re seated all around me like gluttons waiting to carve up a roast pig.

  Torian broke my concentration when she yelled loud enough to silence everyone else in the room. “Next person to lecture me on the necessity of making hard choices for the empire is going to wake up with a broken jaw,” she announced. “Nobody kills this idiot unless it’s me doing the killing!”

  I was touched. Sort of.

  “A similar warrant could be placed on your own head, Lieutenant Libri, should you threaten this council a second time,” the camel warned.

  Not a camel, I reminded myself. A human being. One who might need blasting pretty soon.

  My brain was now functioning at least moderately close to its usual slow-witted pace, so I shifted my attention to my body. Subtly and methodically, I began to clench and unclench my muscles one after another, even though I couldn’t feel them working. Numbing the nerves is one thing, but actually deadening the muscles for any length of time tends to lead to rapid respiratory failure. So either Torian had given me a fatal dose of poison, or I should soon be able to make my move.

  Now I just needed a move to make.

  Most of the palace was warded against Jan’Tep magic, so my blasting spell was likely to fail even if I could muster the dexterity required—which I probably couldn’t. Similarly, castradazi magic calls for deftness in the fingers to make the coins dance. If I tried anything that complicated right now, I’d just end up dropping the coins all over the floor. Even my steel throwing cards required careful aim, no matter what Ferius might say.

  One of these days I need to come up with a way of killing people that doesn’t call for steady hands.

  “Six of us have voted in favour of the execution warrant before the spellslinger’s recklessness endangers both the crown and the empire,” the vulture who’d referred to Torian as “Little Tori” said.

  Ancestors, please let me live long enough to call her that at least once.

  The vulture went on. “Let’s hear from the rest of the council. We need one more
vote for the required majority, so let’s hurry it up, people. We have more important business to discuss.”

  Her voice was the one closest to my ear, just to my right side. A plan began to form in my mind. Not a particularly good one, but then, plans never are until they’re successful.

  Then they’re bloody genius.

  Here’s a fun thing to try: imagine yourself rolling over as fast as you can and at the same time drawing a steel card from a leather pouch strapped to your right thigh. Doesn’t sound too hard, right? Problem is, without any feeling in your arms and legs, you have no idea if you’ve executed the move perfectly or just flopped onto your belly like a dead fish.

  Next, picture your free hand pressing down onto the table, pushing you to your knees. Better do it fast, otherwise someone in the room will have the chance to punch, stab or otherwise put a quick end to your daring escape.

  Again though, since you can’t feel anything, you’ve no idea if it worked.

  But let’s be optimists, shall we?

  Get your feet under you and push off hard against the table—not too hard though, because then you’ll wind up slamming inelegantly into the back wall. No, you’ve got to make the leap with just the right amount of force to land right behind a chair that you’re only guessing exists.

  Now, assuming you’ve moved at all and this hasn’t been one last, desperate hallucination brought on by a paralytic that’s now worked its way to your heart, spin around and place the steel card you drew—remember the card? Don’t drop it! You’ve got to carefully set the sharp edge right up against the neck of the woman who seconds before called for your execution.

  Oh, and one last thing: do it all with your eyes closed because you’ve been lying under a half-dozen lights so long that right now you’re pretty much blind.