Wicked Saints

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Wicked Saints Page 16

by Emily A Duncan


  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  The gardens were dark—no guards, no one at all. Just three Tranavian teenagers with jars of krój and time to waste. They were still waiting to hear back from the boy Kacper had sent to poke around the Salt Mines. Serefin had gotten to all the necessary tasks that came with returning home: collecting a selection of new spell books, speaking with the slavhki who requested an audience, and other duller affairs.

  He still hadn’t visited his mother. He wasn’t putting it off per se, he just hadn’t found the right time for it. The second he went to visit her, everything would come spilling out of him. He wasn’t so sure she could keep things from his father.

  So, instead of investigating the plots swirling thickly through the air of Grazyk just as heavy as its magic smog, Serefin did the one thing he knew best: consumed a fantastic amount of alcohol.

  It was fitting assassins chose to strike that same evening.

  Ostyia was the one to catch them, shooting to her feet and drawing the thin szitelki at her waist in one rapid motion.

  The world spun dangerously as Serefin stood, but he shook it away, forcing himself sober. Well, as sober as possible.

  “How on earth did they make it past the walls?” Kacper asked in disbelief.

  Ostyia and Kacper both moved instinctively closer to Serefin, shielding him. A spinning dagger cut through the air toward him.

  He saw the blade coming and ducked out of the way, his fingers already paging through his spell book without his mind following. He cut open his forearm on the razor in his sleeve and it bled profusely.

  “Kalyazi?” he muttered under his breath to Ostyia. A second assassin appeared down the garden path. The third shot out from the bushes, knocking Kacper down.

  “Can’t tell.” She seemed torn about which assassin to go after, not wanting to leave Serefin on his own while Kacper grappled with the third.

  Serefin knocked her toward the one down the path as he crumpled a spell book page. His magic ignited and he let the assassin in front of him draw close before he lifted a hand and blew on his bloody fist. The paper crumbled into dust in his palm and shot in an acrid spray into the masked face of the assassin. When the dust hit, it burst into flames.

  Serefin lashed out with a booted foot that connected with the assassin’s middle. The man went down in a heap. He turned to find Kacper had cut the throat of one assassin. Ostyia—shorter than her attacker by almost half—had cast a spell that made the last assassin falter. As he tried to regain his footing she threw herself at him, catching her legs around his waist and driving both blades into his neck. She gracefully leapt off as the man fell.

  Well, that was short work. Serefin wasn’t sure who would send such incompetent assassins after him, but apparently someone had too much faith in their purchase.

  Ostyia turned. Her single eye widened.

  “Serefin!”

  Something hit the back of his head. Pain exploded through him and he stumbled forward. He felt the stone path scrape his knees open. He managed to roll into a crouch. His vision swam and he could barely make out another set of three figures in the darkness.

  Of course there would be more. He tried to stand but his struggling vision and spinning head made it impossible.

  Kacper moved toward the new group, but one of them was already at Serefin’s side, a flash of steel at their hands. Suddenly they were gone and a figure Serefin couldn’t identify was standing in front of him.

  The new figure’s face ducked before his.

  “Get him up, I don’t think he can see.” He knew the voice instantly.

  “Lady Ruminska, I don’t think—” Ostyia called, but Żaneta was already turning to face the remaining pair of assassins.

  Blood ran down her arms as she tore two pages from her spell book. She wiped blood over them both while dodging out of the way of the assassins’ blades. One by one she let the pages flutter to the ground.

  Iron spikes shot out from where the papers landed, skewering the assassins simultaneously and pinning them together. Both went down in bloody heaps. The pain in Serefin’s head amplified and he pitched forward, barely catching himself before face-planting into the stones. He lasted there for a few tense seconds—he could vaguely hear someone’s voice but he couldn’t tell if it was Żaneta or Ostyia—before everything shuttered black around him.

  * * *

  This was worse than any hangover Serefin had ever experienced. And he always kept track of his hangovers and how badly they hurt. He had a list.

  His head pounded. His mouth tasted like blood and was dry as a desert. When he opened his eyes, a vivid panic shot through him. He thought he had gone completely blind. Until he realized it was still dark outside.

  Something rustled in the room and a candle lit. Żaneta set the candle by the bedside table before sitting down on the side of his bed.

  “This is scandalous, Żaneta,” he mumbled, resting his head back against the pillows.

  “Definitely more scandalous than the prince being attacked in his own palace gardens,” she agreed.

  He lifted his hands and pressed his fingers against his throbbing temples. “Are you sure they didn’t kill me?” he asked.

  “Mostly.”

  Her auburn curls hung loose around her shoulders. He found himself tracking the freckles that dusted her warm brown skin.

  “Did any of them survive?” he asked.

  She nodded. “The one with the burned face. Your handiwork?”

  He tried to nod but it hurt too badly. “Yes.”

  “A good spell,” she said. “We have him in the dungeons.”

  “Does my father know what happened?” Serefin didn’t want to know the answer, but he had to ask.

  “He does.”

  Serefin groaned.

  “I’m glad I wasn’t there when he was told,” she said.

  Serefin needed to think, but the pounding in his head was making it difficult. There was no point in going back to sleep. He wasn’t sure he would be able to, anyway. He needed answers. He wanted to demand an explanation from his father; surely this was his doing. Yet his rational side knew this couldn’t be his father’s doing. Because it had failed. Gloriously.

  “My father is going to blame the Kalyazi,” he mused.

  “Was it not them?” Żaneta asked, standing up.

  “I … don’t know.” The Kalyazi did not train incompetent assassins; his eye was a tribute to that. This could have been the work of the Crimson Vulture. Perhaps his father was behind the attack and she had shifted the pieces so incompetent assassins were sent instead to give him a better chance. He hated living with a black cloud of doom hovering over his steps, certain that his future was bleak but not having any clear answers.

  “Would you fetch Kacper, please?” he asked.

  Żaneta frowned. She hesitated, as if she wanted to argue, but then left. Serefin wondered what she was holding back.

  Serefin let those thoughts fade when Kacper entered, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Żaneta seemed upset,” Kacper said.

  “I said nothing to upset her.”

  Kacper let it drop. “A Vulture was sent to interrogate the remaining assassin. I assume we’ll be hearing of that by noon. In the meantime…”

  Serefin worked himself to a sitting position. He stared blankly into the darkness at the opposite end of the room.

  What information did he have? An attack on his life, a plan to find a queen for Tranavia, and questions with no answers. Why was his father sending thousands upon thousands of prisoners to the Salt Mines? Why was his father working so closely with the Vultures? To what end? Why now?

  What is happening?

  “Have you seen the current list of families participating in the Rawalyk?” Kacper asked.

  “No, why?”

  “It seems to be fluctuating,” he said. “Names of girls keep appearing then disappearing suddenly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kacper shook his
head. “I’m not sure. I want to look into it, see if the girls are just getting nervous or if it’s something else.”

  Serefin let out a breathless laugh. “We are so paranoid.” There was a beat of silence. “I need to talk to my mother,” he murmured.

  He wasn’t sure she could help him, not with anything. But it was all he could do at this point. He was trapped in a cage of gold and iron with no door to escape from and had been given a dagger when he needed a saw to cut a hole in his prison.

  “I can have a servant sent to her quarters,” Kacper said. “Is that all?”

  Serefin nodded absently, before frowning and squinting up at Kacper. “Are you all right?”

  Kacper blinked in surprise. “Me? Of course, why? They weren’t trying to kill me.”

  Serefin eyed the other boy, taking in his dark hair and skin, the scar that cut across one of his eyebrows, and his sharp, brown eyes. He hadn’t grown up fighting off assassination attempts like Serefin and Ostyia. By all rights, Kacper should have been just another soldier in the king’s army; he was of low birth. His exceptional talent with blood magic and his sharp skills for espionage meant he had been shuffled around in the army until he was assigned to Serefin’s company. Their friendship had been struck a month into Serefin’s first tour of the front when he was sixteen. Kacper had gotten into a spitting fight with Ostyia. She broke his arm, he fractured three of her ribs, and it had taken Serefin knocking them both unconscious to get them apart.

  Serefin still didn’t know what the fight was about. Neither would tell him. It had taken another week for Serefin to promote Kacper to his personal service after Kacper had nearly lost his other arm on Serefin’s behalf.

  “I don’t need formality, Kacper. Not from you. I was just making sure you weren’t shaken up or anything. Assassins are new for you.”

  Kacper grinned, flopping down next to him on the bed. “To be honest, I was worried it was going to be boring here. The assassins keep it interesting.”

  “You thought Grazyk would be boring?” Serefin asked incredulously.

  “I thought we were just coming here to have your father pick out a pretty girl for you to marry and then it would be back to the front.”

  Serefin groaned. “Don’t talk about marriage.”

  “You sound like Ostyia.”

  “Ostyia would be in a far better position if she were in my shoes. She dumped the last suitor her father sent her way in a fountain. I think before this is over she’ll have romanced at least half the girls here.”

  “At least?”

  Serefin considered that. “Yes, you’re right, perhaps more than half.” Ostyia was very charming. When she wanted to be.

  * * *

  When Serefin finally rose to meet with his mother, his head had incrementally slowed its pounding. Every step he took was a mild agony, but he pressed through it. He needed to show Grazyk their High Prince would not be slowed by anything, not the prospect of marriage nor assassins in the night.

  Ostyia knocked on the door to Klarysa’s quarters before Serefin. The door was opened by his mother’s handmaiden, Lena. She nodded crisply at Serefin and gestured for him to enter. Ostyia elected to wait outside.

  “I have been in this blasted city for weeks now and my only son has just finally deigned to grace me with his presence.” The graceful lilt of his mother’s voice came floating down the hall. Lena shot Serefin a sympathetic look. Serefin had always found his mother to be a bit baffling. Both of his parents were larger than life, greater than reality. He had seen so little of them growing up.

  His childhood had been spent with tutors and servants. His parents were figureheads who would move in and out of his life with little permanence. They sometimes appeared in the evening at mealtimes only to disappear once again at the start of a new day. Serefin had Ostyia—whose family had always lived in the palace—as well as a cousin on his mother’s side, but that was all. The cousin had left when they were still very young, off to the country for his health. His aunt and uncle were still seen around the palace, Serefin knew that much, but he had never seen his cousin again, and had eventually stopped inquiring.

  “I’ve been otherwise occupied,” he said, pitching his voice to reach his mother and following along after it.

  The sitting room was lavish, as would befit a queen. His mother sat on a velvet-embroidered chaise, a cloth mask covering her nose and mouth. Her brown curls were swept up elaborately, and her spell book rested on a nearby end table.

  She stood, setting her book facedown on the arm of the chaise. “Serefin,” she said, tugging her mask down.

  She drew him into her arms, and he had to stoop so she could kiss his cheek.

  “Mother, I’m glad to see you well,” he said as she sat back down. She motioned to the chair opposite the chaise and he sat.

  “Well enough for your father to drag me back to this dirty city.” She paused, then conceded: “For a good cause.”

  “Is it a good cause?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Straight to the point?”

  “I don’t really have time for much else.” He crossed his legs, resting an ankle on the opposite knee. “I’ve spoken to Pelageya and the Crimson Vulture, and I have to admit I felt safer at the front.”

  “And here I was going to ask if you were all right. I heard you were attacked last night?”

  “I’m here, so I assume that means I’m fine.”

  Klarysa smiled wryly. “I do find it interesting that you went to Pelageya before me,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. He knew that tone. She wasn’t disappointed in him, rather she was telling him he had made a foolish decision but she wasn’t about to say it aloud.

  “Circumstances called for it,” he replied.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure they did.”

  I don’t have time for this, he thought. But he did. That was the thing. He was trapped here—doing nothing, knowing nothing. He could feel the jaws of the invisible beast closing over him but he was powerless to stop it.

  “Do you think I can turn the court to my side?” he asked.

  She blinked, straightening in her chair. “Serefin?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he knows anyway,” Serefin said, waving a hand. “I just need to know how many steps ahead of me he is.”

  “Your father—” She put emphasis on the word father as if it meant something to Serefin. Maybe once it had. Years ago when he thought he might win his father’s love. Not anymore.

  “I found a cleric in Kalyazin. No one else seems to find that important. Doesn’t it strike you as a bit strange? They sent the Vultures after her, but she escaped.”

  “The Vultures?”

  “She escaped the Vultures. Why am I the only one troubled by this? What is Father planning that has made this a nonissue?”

  Klarysa’s eyes narrowed and Serefin realized he had hit upon something she had not been expecting. “What … did you speak to Pelageya about?” she asked.

  He scoffed. “She told me a lot of nonsense that sounded like prophecy.”

  “Listen to her, Serefin. I know you don’t want to. I know you think her mad. But listen to her. She could be the only thing that saves you.”

  “Saves me? Yes, I’m clearly trying not to die here, but I don’t think the witch is going to help.”

  “Not from your father, from the Vultures. From the gods. From everything.”

  “Mother?”

  “Pelageya knows what she speaks of.” His mother was speaking quickly, her voice low. She knew whatever they said would return to the king. She cast a suspicious glance toward where the wall met the ceiling, the likeliest of locations for eavesdropping spells. “I can’t help you, Serefin, you know that.”

  Serefin felt cold. “What has he done?”

  Klarysa shook her head. There was fear in her eyes.

  She can’t tell me, he realized. If she tells me, he’ll kill her, too. What did she know that he had yet to figure out?

  “Give me something,” he pleaded
.

  “Your father has always been a monster,” she said. “But at least he had his own mind, his decisions were his own.” She shook her head. “I fear he too has been taken by the Vultures.”

  She fell silent, but Serefin didn’t need any more to put the pieces together. The Vultures had gone from their own agendas to whispering in the king’s ear. The whispering had gone from suggestions to puppet strings.

  It was altogether likely there was discord amongst the Vultures as well. That the Crimson Vulture was working apart from her own king, the Black Vulture. But who was holding the strings?

  Serefin still had no answers.

  18

  NADEZHDA

  LAPTEVA

  Vaclav is rarely seen, rarely heard, and rarely worshiped. Dark forests and darker monsters heed his calls. His lands are vast and ancient and deadly and he is not kind. Truth is never kind.

  —Codex of the Divine, 23:86

  Nadya was the most surprised of everyone when her plan to get them across the border worked.

  “Where’s your company, son?” The Tranavian who confronted them looked older than Malachiasz, and thought by that principle he outranked him.

  Malachiasz drew himself straight, his posture betraying the air of someone who was used to having authority. He flicked his hair away from where it was covering the pins on his jacket. Now Nadya was doubly certain she didn’t want to know what they meant.

  “Lost most of them to mercenaries hiding in the mountains,” he said. “Lost the rest somewhere in between.”

  The soldier frowned at Malachiasz, but when he spoke again the condescension was gone. “Who are they, then?”

  Malachiasz glanced back at the group. “The Akolans are fleeing Kalyazin, a wise decision. The girl is…” He faltered, convincingly. “Well, you understand.” He winked at the soldier.

  It took everything Nadya had to keep her expression schooled.

  “I’ll need you to come with me,” the soldier said, giving Malachiasz a hard once-over. He pulled a second soldier over and ordered her to make sure the rest of them didn’t go anywhere.

 

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