Blood Mercy (Blood Grace Book 1)

by Vela Roth

  King Lucis now occupied the Mage King’s chair. He sat in the northern seat, facing distant Orthros, from whence the Hesperines would come. The golden glow around him seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The royal mage’s apprentice stood nearby, his hands fidgeting. The young man twitched glances between his master and the king as if he feared execution should they dislike his display of spell lights. He would do well here.

  The only occupant of the dais younger than the apprentice was Caelum. He occupied his usual place befitting the king’s heir, a chair set up to the throne’s right. Cassia did not envy her half brother that seat. But that was the extent of sympathy she could feel for him, seeing his customary expression of indolent dissatisfaction.

  She could make out the shape of the palace to the south. Torch flames dotted its ramparts and towers, tiny lights pushing back against the deep blue sky and its many pale stars. Figures slipped away from the crowd toward the black refuge of the king’s house. What a singular night, when anyone regarded that place as a welcome escape. How those returning to the palace must pity all who were forced to remain on the green to greet the Hesperine embassy.

  But Cassia had paid dearly so she could be here at this moment, and she would have paid an even higher price to trade places with the free lords, advisers and mages who now took their positions behind the dais in order of precedence. This was indeed a singular night, when she coveted any precedence at all in the king’s company.

  But this was not her opportunity to get close to the Hesperines. For that she must wait.

  The people in front of her stopped so suddenly she nearly ran into them. The crowd stilled. Then it shifted and parted. Knight pushed against her legs, and she trusted his instincts, stepping back with the others to make way.

  Through the gap came dozens of men and women driving a bull in their midst. They were farming folk all, with drab, worn garments and bodies made hard by lifelong labor. The beast dug its heels in, thrashing its head, and the men strained at the ropes that bound it. One of the women slapped it with a switch of sunsword. Red stained one white flank, and the bull began to bellow. The voices of the crowd rose to be heard over its outcries. The woman switched the beast again, and the other farmers with her took up a supplication, wailing a prayer of protection to Anthros over and over. An ancient prayer, words the Mage King might once have uttered.

  These folk were beyond weaving circles of branches and not so easily removed as flowers. They came within arm’s length of Cassia as they hauled the bull toward the temple, and she saw the stark lines of their faces, the sweat soaking through their clothes.

  When they reached the steps, they tipped the beast, forcing it onto its side. The man in the lead knelt before the door of the temple and drew the sickle he carried on his back. He laid the blade before him on the steps and called above the wailing women, “Mage of Anthros, will you not come out? Will you not make even one offering? Our children need protection. Shield us from the creatures that are coming! Give the god of war blood, so our children will not be a blood sacrifice to the dark goddess‌‌‌‌—”

  The rest of the man’s words went unheard amid the pounding of boots and the whisk of swords leaping from scabbards. The king’s men were up the stairs and upon the gathering before the man had time to fall silent. The women’s laments gave way to screams.

  “Children of Anthros, be still.”

  The mage’s calm statement brought instant silence. The guards paused, swords raised, their hands still closed around the peasants’ arms and collars. Only the bull continued to groan.

  Amachos stood silhouetted in the doorway of the temple, where there had been nothing but night insects swarming about the spell lights. “These good people have brought a fine sacrifice to their god. How can Anthros not be pleased with such devotion?”

  The kneeling man bowed his head, pushing the sickle forward, which earned him a knee in his side from one of the guards. The farmer grimaced, but found breath to speak. “Please, Honored Master.”

  “I will gladly dedicate your sacrifice. However, such an act should not be performed in the dark, but in the sunlight. On the morrow, bring the bull here once more for noon rites, and we shall honor the god.”

  The man jerked up his head. “But the monsters come tonight. We will not be safe until tomorrow. Since before our fathers’ fathers’ time, the Hesperines have roamed unseen in these lands with no Equinox Oath to bind them. Who knows what dark deeds they have committed? What more might they do to us tonight if they walk in unchallenged, with no sacrifice to keep their evil at bay?”

  “Calm yourself, man. We mages have protected you these many centuries, even when the Oath lapsed. We have never allowed Hesperines to dishonor the gods within Tenebra, nor does your king invite harm into his land tonight.”

  “Will their vile acts go unpunished?” cried a man somewhere in the crowd. “Will you not drive out the monsters?”

  “Drive them out,” other men called in unison. “No treaty. Drive them out.”

  The women’s wails split the night again.

  “Silence,” said the mage.

  The cries ceased again, but not the murmurs. Cassia could hear them all around her, the words no one had dared speak since the Beacon had ignited.

  “The Hesperines don’t want peace, only our blood…”

  “…invited them to a feast, not a negotiation. They’ll tear out our throats and drink us dry before the night is through!”

  “Thieving monsters. They come for our children! They’ll take them…my little ones…”

  “…and desecrate our dead…fornicate with corpses and then our women…”

  “Beware their seduction. To lie beneath a Hesperine is to welcome your own death.”

  “If you’re fortunate. They spill no seed inside you, only blood, and if you live through it, you’ll turn into one of them.”

  “Silence!” Light flashed in the mage’s upraised hands. “We should not perform the sacrifice here and now, not when the Hesperines may arrive any moment and behold a sacred act they are unfit to witness. We will perform the rite tomorrow.”

  “You do not protect us!” The farmer’s voice broke. In one motion, he closed his hand around the sickle and leapt to his feet. “May Anthros accept our meager offering.”

  He spun on his heels and brought the sickle down. Inches above the bull’s throat, the blade spun away and clattered to the stone. The man pitched forward onto the beast. The guard behind him planted a boot on his back and retrieved a sword from between his shoulders, releasing a rush of blood in the blade’s wake. The bull let out one roar after another, and the crowd echoed it.

  Cassia did not join in their useless raving. Were they really so shocked? Had they expected their disobedience to end any other way?

  The guard moved his sword into position at the bull’s throat, as if silencing it could silence the people too. But he halted before his blade touched the animal, his attention riveted on something beyond the crowd. The bull blinked, sighed, and lay quietly.

  Cassia recognized its calm. Its sense of safety. She knew what she would see if she followed the guard’s gaze.

  She looked. The silhouette of the trees had changed. The branches were no longer bare, but covered in birds of every size and shape, the only heralds of the embassy’s arrival.

  The Hesperines stood on the slope above the greensward like natural shapes that had grown there over centuries and not merely appeared just now.

  Cassia felt like she was a small child again, looking up at their tall figures to gaze upon their perfect faces. Their dark, flowing garments were just as she remembered, coated in embroidery that caught every shard of light. How could anything alive stand so still?

  Something unbearable tore open inside of her, and she wanted to howl as the bull had. But she stood silent.

  Blood in the Night

  Lio breathed through his mouth, but he could still taste it. Bloodshed. The smell threatened to gag him.

&nbs
p; His Hesperine senses gave him no mercy. Odors flooded up from the crowd of mortals below and crept into his mouth. The bull’s terror. Human sweat and anger. The blunt stink of cruelty.

  One stench overpowered all the others. He had never smelled it before, and yet some deep part of him understood what it meant. Something was wrong that could never be righted. Something irreplaceable was broken, which he could never mend. He could not shut out the stench, no matter how it horrified him.

  He could smell death.

  Lio’s heart pounded in unison with the bull’s. Through the Blood Union that flowed between Hesperines and all living beings, he felt the animal’s veins straining under the stress of terror. Strengthening the Union with his own magic, he joined his mind with the bull’s. The one creature here whose suffering he could ease. That much was within his power.

  For the animal’s sake, Lio found the Will to summon a sense of calm, which he wrapped about the bull’s thoughts. The bovine mind responded, and terror gave way to relief until the bull lay quiet and content, assured of safety. As if Lio could really promise it to him.

  Beyond the Union of his and the bull’s minds, Lio sensed his uncle’s approval and a far stronger spell of reassurance. His mentor’s power reached across the crowd, and the angry mob of humans quieted without even knowing a Hesperine mind mage was at work. Not a single person charged forward to share in the farmer’s irreversible fate.

  Lio could give into his uncle’s power, as if he too were merely a frightened animal. But he held himself back from the spell, held respite at bay.

  He would withstand his first journey to Tenebra by relying on his own strength. What use was he to his people otherwise?

  A man lay dead below. What right had he to feel anything but horror?

  Lio’s gut trembled. He swallowed and gripped his hands tighter behind his back as if that could keep him on his feet. He glanced at the sky for fortitude, but clouds were creeping across the stars, and the moons did not yet gaze over the horizon. A gust of wind disturbed the fetid air, sweeping in from the grounds beyond the palace and across the greensward. He braced himself for another wave of sickening odors.

  A powerful fragrance struck him full in the face and warmed its way through his senses. Clean skin, human hair, and the natural aromas of a female body. Deep, rich notes of dignity and pride. Anger a hot top note, grief a bittersweet flourish throughout. His gut clenched again, but not from disgust this time.

  Humans could be so beautiful. Here was one, somewhere among the desperate, ugly scene below, so lovely she pained the senses.

  Tightness spread in Lio’s throat. She was alive. The man on the temple steps was not.

  Lio had volunteered for the embassy with full knowledge of what he might witness. He had arrived in Tenebra well educated, with realistic expectations. He was prepared for this. That should make this easier.

  No. No, he hadn’t been prepared for the embassy’s mere arrival to cost a life.

  The white-haired figure on the throne below sat amid his frightened subjects. At last the king spoke, leaning close to the ear of a scarred warrior who stood beside him. “Get them out of sight.”

  The warrior leaped off the dais, although there was more gray in his hair than brown, which marked him as being in the latter years of his mortal life. As he strode toward the temple, the crowd parted to let him onto the steps. The influence Lio’s uncle had exerted on the mob had helped them see reason, not taken away their will to fight. That they made way for this man spoke of their fear—or their respect.

  The grizzled, stocky warrior must be the Free Lord of Hadria, the king’s best sword and right hand, commander of his armies and the strategist essential to all his campaigns. Lio suspected it was not only prowess in battle that had kept the commander alive for decades under King Lucis’s rule and secured his reputation as the most loyal free lord in Tenebra. Even now the canny warrior said no words, which the Hesperines could have easily heard. Instead he gestured to the guards in what appeared to be a language of hand signs understandable to his fellow mortal soldiers.

  The guards sprang into action, and Lio flinched. In Union with the supplicants, he felt their mortal terror of the unknown fate that awaited them at the soldiers’ hands.

  “Please.” Lio’s uncle spoke his appeal in Vulgus. “Do not refrain from your sacred practices on our account. We beg your forbearance for our interruption.”

  A true apology would have demanded the embassy retreat and return when the rite was at an end, but Lio knew his uncle would not offer that. The Hesperine presence that had sparked this violence now seemed the people’s only hope for clemency. For the moment. Lio knew not what would become of those poor souls when the king’s guests were no longer watching. Responsibility demanded that he consider it, but his sanity required otherwise.

  Lord Hadrian did not even glance at Lio’s uncle, only continued to signal to the guards. Lio dared not watch the spectacle draw to an end. The sounds were enough. The women wept, and the men grunted in pain as the guards dragged them down the steps. Military boots marched, while poorly shod feet stumbled in the grass in the direction of the palace. The steady thud of hooves told Lio the bull, at least, walked away.

  It was the king who responded to Lio’s uncle with a gesture toward the Hesperines. Another noble left his side, this one chestnut-haired and tall for a human. As he descended the dais, more soldiers fell into step behind him. They marched up the hill toward the embassy.

  Lio felt his people brace themselves and each other through the Blood Union they shared. On the same currents, Lio’s uncle made known his instructions. Wait.

  Lio made an effort to compose himself. His career as a diplomat Abroad had now begun. From this moment on, he represented his people, his Queens, and his Goddess in a way he never had at home in Orthros. Even if his first foreign assignment came to a premature end when those soldiers made it up the hill.

  The fourteen warriors in gleaming mail carried longswords with the blades resting on their shoulders. The same elaborate heraldry covered each of their tabards, the royal arms of Tenebra over and over. The solar imagery and symbols of violence matched the paintings in Lio’s scrolls exactly, but they looked different on living men.

  Lio realized the lord at the head of the company wore an elegant velvet tunic instead of armor, although the sword at his belt was no ceremonial decoration. This close, Lio could see the silver at the man’s temples, the crows’ feet around his eyes and the sheen of sweat on his brow. He smelled of expensive scent oils, bravery and fear. “On behalf of His Majesty King Lucis Basileus of Tenebra, Champion of Anthros…”

  As the lord recited the king’s epithets and honors, Lio let his intellect take over and focused on the analytical exercise of testing his knowledge of Tenebran politics. He heard his long study of Lucis’s many conquests summarized in one list of titles. Lio had not skipped a chapter.

  “…allow me to welcome you to Tenebra, here to our ancestral capital at Solorum, ever the seat of our greatest kings,” the man concluded with a bow. A shallow but courteous gesture befitting an encounter between equals. “I am Titus, Free Lord of Segetia, and it is my honor to serve as the king’s voice during this, the first Equinox Summit in countless generations.”

  So this man with the sharp blade, pleasant countenance and larger vocabulary than most Tenebrans was Free Lord Titus, reputedly the closest the kingdom had to a diplomat. Lio hoped the man lived up to his reputation, such as it was. At least he and not the soldiers behind him had opened the negotiations.

  Lio’s uncle offered none of the personal compliments that were customary between foreign dignitaries who knew one another by reputation. It was better if the humans did not realize how aware Orthros was of current events in Tenebra. Lord Titus was more likely to feel threatened than flattered if he knew Hesperines had been following his career.

  “Well met, Lord Titus.” Lio’s uncle bowed. “I am Argyros, the Queens’ Master Ambassador. This is my lady, Hippol
yta.”

  With the rest of the embassy, Lio held his breath.

  Lord Titus gave Aunt Lyta a deep, courtly bow worthy of a lady immortalized in love ballads, not one whose unholy deeds minstrels decried in marching songs. “Welcome indeed.”

  Aunt Lyta took Uncle Argyros’s arm and offered Lord Titus a benign smile. “We thank you for your gracious welcome, my lord.”

  Lio and his companions traded relief back and forth through the Blood Union. It seemed the names Argyros and Hippolyta did not mean anything to Lord Titus. He did not realize Silvertongue and the Guardian of Orthros had arrived at his king’s negotiation table. After the span of centuries since the last Summit, it apparently did not occur to him that he had just met the same Hesperine ambassador who had treated with his ancestors. And the petite, poised female before him, with her dark auburn hair groomed smooth as silk, must not look to Lord Titus like a notorious abomination of her sex.

  Humans’ written records were pitiable, but minstrels never forgot the likes of Argyros and Hippolyta. Argyros was the diplomat the Queens had always sent to Tenebra for the Equinox Summit since the first one nearly sixteen centuries ago. Hippolyta’s role in the Last War, which made her legendary among Hesperines, made her equally infamous among mortals.

  Thankfully, it was their deeds and not their names that lived on in song here. It appeared the mere fact that they were Hesperines already pushed even the king’s bold spokesman to his limits.

  Another drop of sweat trickled down Lord Titus’s temple. “His Majesty wishes me to deliver his sincerest apologies for the disorder of his house upon your arrival. We assure you, this is not indicative of the rest of your stay.”

  “It is our arrival that has proved inconsiderate,” Uncle Argyros replied. “It grieves us that we have intruded upon a sacred hour.”

  Lord Titus shook his head, holding up his hands. “These misguided subjects who have disobeyed our king and disrespected the royal mage are unworthy of your concern. Please join us below upon His Majesty’s dais, while the offenders are seen to and the palace guard ensures the safety of all gathered here.”