Cursebreaker

by Carol A Park

  “Apparently, Ri Airell just returned to the country estate after being in Cohoxta negotiating with the Conclave. He’s ordered increased security measures.”

  Ivana didn’t like the sound of that. Either the name of the man who had once seduced, impregnated, and then left her—or what he was doing. “And what does that mean?”

  “First, he’s mustering Fereharian troops in response to the call of the United Setanan. Second, he’s working with the Gan and local lords to increase patrols on the main roads. We’re likely to be stopped on the way if we stay on the main road.”

  Stopped and tested, no doubt. “How’s your lightblood aether holding up?”

  “I have enough to get by routine testing on the way. If it turns into something more than routine…” He grimaced, which was enough of an answer.

  “Anything else?”

  “Everyone hates Airell. More than my father, which hardly seems possible, but there it is.” He sighed. “It seems Yaotel was correct in his assessment of the situation here. There’s a lot of grumbling. Didn’t hear one word in defense of Airell—or the Conclave, for that matter. And the frustration is bubbling right beneath the surface. With a pint or two of ale to loosen their tongues, the old-timers were more than willing to wax eloquent regarding their opinions on the change in leadership.”

  “The apothecary isn’t alone in her opinion of their new Ri, then,” Ivana said. That would have been gratifying if it didn’t mean the hatred was well-deserved—and on the backs of Fereharians, no doubt.

  Vaughn shook his head. “No. She’s not. And it’s justified. Airell’s raised taxes to a high enough level that even those in the middle are starting to feel the pinch. The story the apothecary told us yesterday isn’t an uncommon occurrence.” He paused. “There’s been more than one young woman strongly encouraged to enter his service.”

  “Well. He’s good at taking advantage of people.” She intended it as an offhand, careless comment, but the words struck fire in her bones.

  Vaughn eyed her. “At any rate, if the rumors are to be believed, it’s not only the commoners who are disgruntled with him. He spends most of his time lazing about at the country estate rather than in Cohoxta doing his job, which has alienated his Gan—and he dismissed all my father’s advisors and hired his own, who are, by all reports, nothing more than drinking buddies.”

  Ivana rolled her eyes.

  “There are exceptions, of course. The local lord in charge of this immediate area, Lord Kadmon, hasn’t endeared himself to the people in order to earn any supporters, either. He’s taken it upon himself to mimic the ‘strategies’ of his new lord. I overheard the locals grumbling about both him and Airell over their beer.”

  Ivana stopped listening at the words “Lord Kadmon.” How was that bastard still alive? He had been old when Ivana had left.

  Left. That sounded so calm. As if she had merely bid farewell one sunny day, instead of having fled with only the clothes on her back, slavers nipping at her heels, and her sister screaming behind her not to leave her.

  She couldn’t suppress the shudder that went through her.

  “Are you listening to me?” asked Vaughn, snapping her back to the moment. “What are you thinking about?”

  She was getting bad at masking her emotions in front of Vaughn. “Nothing.”

  He gave her a look.

  She gritted her teeth and sighed. “Lord Kadmon was the noble my father worked for.”

  “Ah.”

  “He kicked us out of our home in the middle of winter with pennies to our name, and after my mother died of an illness she probably would never have caught had we had money for better living arrangements, he tried to sell myself and my sister into slavery to make up our so-called debts to him.” It was laughable that “V.I.” had called him a “decent fellow” in his letter to Ivana’s father. He was as monstrous as Gildas in his own way. Despicable, cowardly, greedy man. And yet, he had prolonged his life to above average while Ivana’s father, a man who had served him faithfully for more than a decade, had died in his own blood practically on Kadmon’s doorstep.

  A flame burned in her chest, and try as she might, she couldn’t put it out. He was so close. Within a couple of hours’ walk. Even in the right direction.

  Her eyes flicked to her bag, on top of which she had tossed her dagger in its sheath.

  “Ivana?”

  She started.

  Vaughn folded his arms across his chest. “We’re not taking a detour so you can wreak vengeance on Kadmon.”

  She blinked at him. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You know, that whole-innocent-shy-girl routine doesn’t work on me. I know better. Also, do I need to remind you that Sweetblade is supposed to be dead?”

  “I know that. And anyway, Sweetblade never killed anyone unless it was part of a job, self-defense, or to preserve her identity.”

  Vaughn narrowed his eyes at her, but he let it drop. “Dinner?”

  “Yes. I’m famished.”

  She tried to put Kadmon out of her mind. She really did. But the seed had been planted, and the churning of her own mind nurtured it until it had taken root and sprouted into a plan.

  Ivana wasn’t going to kill Kadmon. She wasn’t. She was just going to scare him a little. Make him nervous. If she could find something she could use to ruin him, all the better.

  That was what she told herself when she slipped out of their room once Vaughn was sound asleep, and what she told herself as she hurried down the road, wrapped in a cloak and invisible with the help of Vaughn’s aether, and what she told herself when she arrived at Kadmon’s estate two hours later and well into the night.

  It was what she told herself when she slipped through an unlocked window to an empty ground-floor room, snuck up the stairs, found Kadmon’s study, and rummaged around in file cabinets.

  It was even what she told herself when, frustrated in her attempts to quickly find evidence of something she could use to ruin him, she crept into his room, deciding scaring him would have to do.

  But when she finally laid eyes on the man who could have helped them but had instead turned a cold shoulder—and worse—to her family’s suffering, she knew she had been lying to herself all along. She wanted him dead. She wanted him dead nearly as much as she wanted to see Airell splayed out in his own blood at her hand, but since Airell was a less convenient—and more challenging—target, Kadmon would do.

  He lay sleeping amidst more finery than she had ever known. A minor noble, to be sure, but wealthy enough to own a modest estate and employ a dozen servants to maintain it.

  And by the state of the grounds, his estate had only grown in wealth in the years since she had last been here.

  But knifing him in the dark wasn’t enough. She wanted him to know, to see, what he had done.

  She made sure the heavy drapes were closed, locked the door, and then lit a single lantern. Then she stood above his bed, waiting until the light and her ambient presence woke him.

  It didn’t take long. He rolled over to face her and the light, and a moment later, was blinking away sleep from his eyes.

  She didn’t wait until the confusion turned to fear, and then the inevitable shout for guards. The moment his eyes lit on her, and before he could move another muscle, she hauled him out of the bed, arm around his mouth, dagger to his throat.

  He had little meat left on his frail body. She could probably kill him by throwing him hard enough against the wall.

  He stopped struggling the moment he felt the cold metal against his flesh.

  He tried to say something, but it was muffled against his arm.

  “Call for the guards or scream and you die,” she whispered into his ear.

  He nodded.

  She pressed the flat of the blade harder against his neck but loosened the hold on his mouth, just enough to let him talk.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” he asked hoarsely.

  S
he pulled him against the wall and then flung him around to face her. With the point of her blade in his throat and the wall behind him, he had no options other than to try to scream for help—and risk her simply killing him before they could come.

  He didn’t scream. His eyes flicked from her hooded face to the hand pressing into his chest, keeping him against the wall. Old he might have been, but his mind was still there. She could already see it whirring away, considering all his enemies and possibilities and how he could weasel out of this and come out on top.

  She hadn’t known him well, but she had seen that look on a dozen faces before—especially on those targets who considered themselves shrewd.

  “Whatever someone has paid you,” he said at last, “I can double it. Triple it, even. Name your price.”

  She shook her hood back and pinned him with her eyes. “That would only be applicable if I were an assassin and you were some nameless target. You don’t know me, do you?”

  His face went paler than it already was. Trying to pay off an assassin might have worked, though any assassin who wanted to build a good reputation rarely took such offers, or they’d become known as untrustworthy. But someone bent on vengeance? That was another matter altogether—and he knew it.

  He studied her face, her eyes, her mouth—and then slowly shook his head. “No. But whatever I did to you, I can make it up to you.”

  Make it up to her. Make it up to her? Could he bring back her mother, her sister, her entire life? A strangled laugh left her lips, bereft of anything resembling humor. “I’m afraid there’s nothing you could do to make it up to me.”

  His eyes flashed with despair. “Please, just don’t hurt my children—or my grandchildren.”

  “My, have you grown soft in your much-advanced age? You didn’t seem to care about children when you turned my family out into the cold and tried to sell my sister and me into slavery.”

  His eyes widened. “My gods,” he said. “It can’t be.”

  “Much better,” she said, and then she pressed the tip of her dagger harder into his throat. “I said this once before, and I’ll take great satisfaction in saying it again: Congratulations on creating your own murderer.”

  He was trembling now. “I can tell you who bought your sister!”

  The words were daggers of ice in her heart, reviving the chilling screams of her sister from her nightmares. Did she even want to know? Did she want the possibility to taunt her? Did she even want to find her sister, if she was alive?

  A necklace, a journal, a chest. Those were objects. And the latter two had done enough to undo her. What would finding her sister do?

  “My sister is almost certainly dead,” she said. “And also almost certainly did not stay with the same person you sold her to.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, spreading his fingers wide in what looked like a conciliatory gesture, even as beads of sweat collected on his brow. “But it’s a trail to follow.”

  She wavered. It would haunt her if she didn’t at least know, didn’t have the option. “I want a name. Now.”

  “A Lord Paddyn, from farther north in Ferehar. You should also know you’re not the first to ask.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “I…” His voice grew stronger. “Someone else inquired after your sister, maybe a few months back.”

  Her frown deepened. That was…disconcerting. Why would anyone else care about her sister? “You’ve been most helpful,” she said. “Perhaps that is the only thing you could have done to make it up to me.”

  He sagged against the wall and his shoulders drooped.

  “I didn’t say you had made it up to me, you bastard.”

  His head jerked up.

  “My father served you faithfully, and you repaid him by destroying what was left of his family. You’re a contemptable coward, and if I had time, I’d find a way to do more than take your life. But I don’t.”

  She slammed her hand against his mouth to cover his scream—

  Vaughn’s voice, soft and low, came from behind her. “Ivana, don’t do this.”

  Damn. “Stay out of this,” she snarled. “It doesn’t concern you.”

  “Since when did you become a murderer?”

  She laughed again, cold and bitter. “That’s cute.”

  “This is different. No one is paying you to do this. This is nothing but a cold-blooded act. This won’t solve anything, this won’t change anything, and it certainly won’t bring back your family. Let him go.”

  He was right. But the hatred she had for this man, a poor substitute for the man she most wanted to destroy, but a substitute all the same, was far too strong for his logic.

  “It’s far too late for that.”

  “I thought Sweetblade was dead,” he said quietly.

  “She is.” She plunged her dagger under Kadmon’s ribs and up into his heart, held it there while the blood ran over her hand, watched his eyes while his life bled out of them.

  And the realization washed over her like the blood on her hand: If Sweetblade was dead, then the bloody hand on that hilt was hers. Ivana’s.

  Sweetblade had last killed a year and a half ago.

  As Ivana, it had been a decade.

  She yanked the dagger out of Kadmon and stepped back. She expected satisfaction. She hoped for numbness. Instead, her dissipating rage warred with despair.

  What she had told Vaughn so many months ago was true: There was no difference.

  Vaughn looked away as Ivana stepped back and Kadmon’s body fell to the floor.

  Silence.

  She had done it. He had thought she could be talked out of this.

  He lifted his eyes to her, avoiding the sight of Kadmon in a pool of blood.

  Her back was still to him, dagger held point down at her side and dripping blood onto Kadmon’s fine rug.

  “Feel better?” he asked. He hadn’t intended for it to come out sounding so accusatory, but it did.

  She expelled a low hiss of air. “I don’t know who you expected to find when you sought me out, Vaughn.” She turned her head so he could see her profile but didn’t turn to face him. “But I am sorry that the person you ended up with has disappointed you. I think the woman you were looking for only exists in your imagination.”

  Vaughn clenched his fists, the emotions of the night roiling through him. “You’re wrong.”

  She did turn, then, and met his eyes. “Discarding an alias doesn’t change the core of what I am.”

  “I know what you are,” he replied. His throat was tight. “I recognize it, because I am intimately familiar with the feeling myself.”

  She snorted. “Please, O Wise One, enlighten me. What am I?”

  Monster.

  He summoned a single word. “Lost.”

  She recoiled. Her eyes flashed and her jaw tightened, but he knew her well enough to know the anger was a defensive reflex. If he ignored the obvious, he could see it: The way her lips parted and her chest moved erratically, the tightness around her mouth, the crevices in the skin around her eyes.

  He had dealt her a blow with that word, and her agony was leaking out.

  He wanted to close the gap between them and draw her into his arms, hold her tightly, and tell her that while he didn’t know the way, she would at least not be alone in the journey.

  The desire was downright frightening, and she would never accept such a gesture anyway.

  Thankfully, she turned away from him and jerked her head toward the bloody corpse on the ground. Her voice was tight. “We should go.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Conclave Lapdog

  The return trip to the inn in Eleuria was silent and tense. Vaughn didn’t dare speak to Ivana; her face was set in stone.

  He didn’t know what to make of this woman. In so many ways, she was the same as she had always been. Closed and hard as steel. And in other ways, she had softened. Seemed willing to be, and even desirous of being, someone different than she had been.

  And yet sh
e swung between the two extremes rapidly—and as he had just witnessed, rather dramatically.

  They were almost to the outskirts of Eleuria, and Vaughn was about to break the silence to suggest disappearing—literally—when a stick cracked in the woods to their left.

  Ivana whirled toward the sound, one hand on the hilt of her dagger and the other on the pouch at her belt, where she carried her supply of his moonblood aether.

  Vaughn, too, turned to look, already reaching for his bow.

  But even his enhanced night vision couldn’t reach into the deepest shadows of the trees.

  He drew closer to Ivana. “Anything?” he whispered.

  She shook her head.

  An animal, most likely. It was unlikely to be a bloodbane this close to a small town.

  Even so.

  He pulled his bow out—

  Stars. Blood. Pain.

  Vaughn woke sitting on the ground, slumped but not toppled over. His lifted his head and immediately regretted it; it felt as though the world had just tilted, and he suppressed the urge to vomit. He breathed slowly in and out for a minute until he felt right-side up again. His head still throbbed and felt sunken in fog.

  And his face was on fire, save his nose. He couldn’t feel his nose. He couldn’t breathe out of his nose, either.

  Yes, something was definitely wrong with his nose.

  He tried to reach up to touch it, but his hand wouldn’t move. He twisted his wrists and tugged. Manacled behind his back and secured to the wall behind him. Great.

  And he couldn’t see his surroundings.

  At all.

  That fact dissipated the fog in his mind more than anything else.

  He swallowed and strained again at his bonds to no avail, and then squinted his eyes desperately. There was only one scenario when he could see nothing in the dark, and that was when there was not one speck of light to see.

  He was either deep underground, in a room sealed so tightly that no light could get in, or someone had physically blinded him.