At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  Cullick.

  Even here, a man was never truly alone, and the ghost of that scoundrel shattered what calm he hoped to find. Between the trees, drab figures in white led a solemn vigil. They were less than they had been before. Another white cloak had come from the south. Darrow was dead. In that, Ersili rejoiced. It was, she declared, better than they might have hoped. Leopold contented himself to prayers. Sacrifice had never been his realm.

  For all Ersili’s words, though, Cullick somehow pulled some small loyalty even from this disaster. Defender, some few voices dared whisper in earshot. That was what they called the man. Like some avenging relic of brighter days. Even the whispers of the murder attempt on the whore’s daughter had only darkened it so much. It had swayed the devout southron nobility, drawing the rank and file from their homes among the plains, but the north—those lands so dangerously close to the crown’s own borders—remained unmoved, and the people with them.

  Just as well. The southerners were real Idasians. God-fearing creatures. They shared their borders with Ravonno, and so their devotion was his gain. Already, he was told, some of the Patriarch’s soldiers gathered with sellswords and marched across their mountain border to swell their alliance’s ranks. Between Mauritz and them, what hope does that isolated cretin have?

  Let the Empress Dowager ride on his behalf across the south. Let that dowager spread her legs and take a thousand men into that traitor’s embrace. Leopold had her daughter, and as far as the nation knew, kept her safe and sound as any goodly uncle should. The mother he would kill at his convenience—an assassin’s blade in the rush of a crowd, perhaps.

  Soldiers lingered at the edge of the garden, watching him carefully. Palace guardsmen, lacking the subtlety he would have preferred. Not like Mauritz’s men. Yet their subtlety was for a lack of presence. It had been half an octave since Mauritz had rallied the majority of his own army and bore them from the city.

  “One cannot wait for siege. Wars are won by the bold,” the man told him.

  That word again. He cringed from it, kicking out his ankle and letting it rest in the soil.

  “My lord?” a small voice beckoned. He flinched. Startled into seeking out the source, he found it at the edge of the trail behind a pair of round, monkey-like eyes, made bountiful only by the touch of Durvalle green.

  Dear, sweet Kanasa. The sister that remained. He smiled to her as brightly as he could, and extended a hand to the space beside him. She swelled at the gesture and stepped boldly forward, pausing only to call to someone off the trail.

  “Come here, child.”

  He froze at the pitter-patter that brought the girl into her sister’s lamplight. It caught in the amber and made a woman of the child, another dirty bastard of the crown. His mood sank deeper into its bleakness. Kanasa merely took Rosamine’s hand and guided her forward. At their backs, two of the Imperial Guard stepped off the path and into shade, clutching their staves tight.

  Somewhere, his bastard uncle would be lurking. It was into his charge the girl had been given, after all. A bastard for a bastard. At times, he seemed surrounded.

  “Your Majesty,” the girl murmured as her half-sister prodded her onward. For an instant, the tiny voice almost reminded him of his own daughter. It only hardened him further.

  “What is this, that I should deserve the bounty of two such lovely ladies this evening?” he tried to answer as jovially as he could.

  He imagined a blade, lingering at the girl’s neck. If only they had left her in that room with that assassin.

  But then, he would have a martyr instead.

  “I thought some air would be good for the girl,” Kanasa said, sounding proud of her assertion. “Even these walls can prove stifling. And when I saw you, I knew providence had struck. We are both children of the gardens, I see.” Her fingers tightened around the girl’s shoulder. It was enough of a gesture to give Leopold pause.

  Perhaps not so sweet. Must even she have some game afoot?

  “All of Ravonno is a garden,” he answered, longingly. “It is pleasing there is at least one place here that aspires to the same.”

  Kanasa’s lips thinned. “I should like to see it one day. And its princes, I understand, are most gracious.”

  So that’s it, then. He might have laughed. So simple a thing, some women’s wants. And he had been worried?

  “But our young sister here had a question for you as well, majesty. We have heard so many things. It would be kind to know the truth of it.”

  “Ask, and I will do my best to answer.”

  At this, Kanasa made another nudge at Rosamine’s shoulder. The girl clung to her, but the delicate touch gently dislodged her, and she stepped before Leopold with a curtsy. She kept her eyes to the ground, but when she spoke, it was quickly. With a child’s obsession.

  “Some of the washer ladies said that mother walks the south. I-I was wondering when I might go to her. I miss her.” Her eyes flitted to him, and quickly back to the earth. “Majesty.”

  It was a struggle to keep the smirk off his face. “Is that so? Well I’ve heard no such thing, my dear, but I assure you, if there is a grain of truth to the tale, I shall send men for her at once. I am sure she misses you at least as much as you miss her. Any mother would.” For a moment, he considered reaching out to touch the girl. But that, he decided, might have been too much.

  “Truly?” The hope in the girl’s eyes could have broken a weaker man’s heart.

  “Truly. If it were in my power, I should let you go to her, but alas…”

  “Is it not?” their sister chimed in, otherwise as featureless as a mouse.

  The firm of his jaw set against her. “Indeed. Do you know what would happen to you, child, if I did? Any manner of men might scoop up a little girl like yourself and bundle you off into the night. And even if you reached her, would you truly want to end up like your brother?”

  “Lothen? You know where Lothen is?”

  “Oh yes. It is to our greatest horror both have been held so long by that wretched Cullick. Did you know that he’s taken your brother in hand, and forces him to marry an old maid?”

  “Godfather?” the girl seemed to perk up.

  “Oh yes. But there is nothing godly about him, I assure you. If you were in his clutches…” He spread his hands in a placating gesture and shook his head sorrowfully. “Your uncle looks out for you, child. He would not have you harmed. But that man has deceived your mother, and would do us all wrong.”

  Though the girl faltered a step, obviously unsettled by these aspersions, the words seemed to sink in. She nodded, as a good child should, and twisted like a reed in the wind. Lost little bird, he mused. Mind your sounds. His attentions shifted up to Kanasa, who drew the girl back and sent her scurrying into the flowers with a few well-placed words.

  Then the youngest of the pureblood Durvalles drew beside him on the bench, and met his gaze with none of her otherwise childish qualities.

  “If you want the south, dear brother, truly want the south, you will need Duke Urtz. Did you know he was once betrothed to Cullick’s daughter?”

  He gaped at her as she plunged on, unabashed. “He is bullheaded, and driven by wine. Easily tamed, by the man that knows how, and he is already predisposed to us—you dealt well with Portir—but if you are to be for him, you will have to limit Mauritz. He hates his great uncle almost as much as he hates his grandfather.” She spread her hands against her skirts and leaned her head against his shoulder. A little girl gone to confession. “I bedded him once. He is not so talented. But his friends are. Especially those in Asantil. And you know, I’ve always fancied an Asanti noble.”

  “Excuse me?” It was as if he was talking to an entirely different woman.

  “Oh come now, brother, this is another game you must learn to play. Father would have had me married to some Banurian slob, or Walim’s delicate duke. I detest the mountains, and I cannot stand a man that looks and acts prettier than I.” She rolled her head up so that their eyes met
, and the almost comical quality behind them returned. “Help me, and I would help you.”

  Can I trust no one’s appearance in this damnable family?

  “And how could anyone in this family help any other?”

  “For starters, you could extend your church’s blessing on me, dear brother. All know our father brought his heretical curses on our heads. There’s not a one of us that doesn’t need absolution. And be it devils or blades, something hunts us in the dark.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” he said quickly, hoping to avoid the topic entirely. It was enough his wife so often turned to that witch and her…tricks. Enough that he had begun to think he might actually require Bertold’s particular talents.

  Spirits. That was the last thing he needed.

  Kanasa frowned. “As though you do not know. People say this family’s cursed. That we’ve fallen out of favor. And the poor old chancellor…”

  “Men drown. It happens.” He countered roughly. “I’ve seen no tragedies since father’s death. Have you stopped to consider it was not your spirit it was after?”

  “And Joseph? And Molin?”

  Long had he dwelt on those too. Longer than she or any other might have realized. It was enough to strangle his voice into a fleeting silence. Joseph. Dear, angry Joseph—such things, they had planned. The one brother he had truly known, and loved. In Cullick’s hands, he had long placed that death—a death that, had it not been, he might yet be far from all this nonsense, aiding, but never held within the torchlight of this foreign soil.

  Joseph had been a careful man. His guards were plenty. Yet Leopold had ever held the assumption that these facts merely indicated an especially skilled assassin. Men could always find a way. Even Ersili, however, had thought different. What assassin did his work with flames, and slipped away from a full cavalcade of soldiers on an open plain?

  “Had they not just come from Cullick’s estate? This specter, whatever it is, I am certain is a creature of his own creation.” In this he was steadfast, but still the woman shrank. A tenderness ate at her, and gave her fears life. So he took her hands, eyes trailing the little girl moving through the flowers. Half of all life was lies anyways. “But fear not, we have seen to its solution. A shadow for a ghost,” he said, gesturing across the lawn. The girl’s eyes followed his motion, to the other robed figure stalking the periphery. A magus. “And words of benediction for any that would bedevil our souls. This place, this home of ours…it is safe, dear girl.”

  But sometimes, when his wife’s witch whispered, and dear Ersili cast about in the dark of the night, he could not help but feel the tingles on his neck. The hair that would not fall. Like a man watched.

  In those moments, he had to wonder what other gifts his step-mother might have left behind. Farrens, after all, are creatures of Mordazz. The Fell God. Demons were his cohorts, his agents, his lovers. Who but they could seek the destruction of those who would not convert?

  Kanasa listened, but he was not sure she heard him. She nodded, absently, and patted his hand, rising a moment later to gather Rosamine for departure. In the same moment, Bertold slid fluidly from the shadows to Leopold’s side, watching the pair head back for the light.

  “We should follow. The hour is late and a chill clings to this air,” his guardian said softly.

  “And is it any warmer in there?”

  Bertold lowered his head, studying the earth a moment longer than seemed necessary. “No, my lord, but your wife lights the fires. And I know the evils there better than those fleshen things that stalk these lanes. One way or another, we are not alone.”

  Even in the gardens. Even at the heart of the world.

  How he longed for Ravonno.

  * *

  As Charlotte stalked around the cross-legged visage of the witch, she found herself marveling at the simplest fact of life: time works in mysterious ways. Such was why a thief, presented with the choice of death or imprisonment, would always choose the cell—one never knew the chance, the bounty, that time might present. Though that said, thieves received a blessed bounty compared to such a sentence as this.

  Which made the witch’s latest turn of character all the more puzzling.

  Usuri tipped her head back to look at her, smile bright and easy on her wan and hollow cheeks. Even the Naran’s dark skin had begun to pale from her long incarceration. Still, the change was not one of skin. In truth the change was one of fingers. They moved with purpose between the lanes of food Charlotte had provided, snapping up bits of bread and chicken like a monk renounced. She feasted, as she had not in whole moons.

  When the servants had come to her with word of the witch’s sudden change, Charlotte had not at first believed. Who would? Before reporting to her father, she intended to see the truth of it, and so she had. That first day, the witch had still been of few words, but she went about her chambers with a purpose, cleaning herself and the darkest corners of the room with a vengeance. When food and drink was taken to her, she dined freely. Gorged herself even.

  Feeding the suicidal was a bit like tossing bread to the flames. Even if it ate, it would only fuel their passion for destruction.

  That first night, the servants told her Usuri took ill from the lot of it.

  Three days had since passed, and Usuri seemed only to be improving. It would please Charlotte’s father, no doubt, but Charlotte herself was not sure what to make of it. This quiet grace was unbecoming of this creature which had, otherwise, presented herself as something of a monster. A ruse, she suspected. It thus became a matter of determining what, exactly, the witch was angling for.

  With the silence between herself and Sara, it was not difficult to find spare moments. So Charlotte went to her, day after day, playing the part of the dutiful attendant.

  And there, she watched.

  Humming, the witch turned on her with those stormy eyes. Trouble cracked like a thunderbolt within them, and yet the clouds seemed calm. An unnerving revelation.

  “Little bird,” the witch whispered, “when will we fly anew?”

  Always the same question. She wanted freedom, it seemed, where before she had only desired the freedom of death. If she was all that she had seemed, could she not simply take it? Surely Charlotte would not have been able to stop her. Not with these hands. Dartrek, hovering in the corner, or the soldiers outside the door, perhaps.

  She smiled for her. “Soon, Usuri, soon. You do seem to be regaining your strength.”

  Usuri watched her for a moment before she shook away, playing with a doll she had pieced together of wood and string and cloth. At its breast, the only sign of extravagance—some old coin strung taut against its breast. It was a sad thing, but between its long hair and thin countenance, Charlotte could almost see her own figure in it. Speaking of unnerving. The last time she had seen such a doll, a man had burned—burned alive.

  “I have decided, you know. Kasimir told me not to. Father would not have wanted to. And Ru…” The voice trailed, growing faint as Usuri pulled somewhere deep inside. Then she popped back, brandishing her doll like a torch. “No man alive could love a creature what so wantonly does as I.”

  Charlotte leaned forward, disliking the portents this brought. Rurik. Had he something to do with this? Since Kasimir’s death, since her father’s last lectures, she had thought the boy’s trouble was at an end. Perhaps it was good, after all, that they had sent the brother to deal with it.

  “Do you find yourself in need of love?”

  “Are not all creatures?” Usuri’s doll pirouetted by its strings, making a dance floor of the witch’s lap. “Even your shadow. We do our worst, and our greatest, for the shadows of that shape.” The doll twisted and swam at Charlotte. “You ask an odd question for one soon wed.”

  So she had heard. It remained a mystery how the girl learned half of what she did. Likely some loose gossip from the hags that attended her. But then, who knew with magic? “Weddings rarely have anything to do with love, Usuri. But mor
e to the point: what is this of Rurik? I thought you had put him from your mind. With his deceptions, and his fickle heart,” she spoke, feeling her father’s repetition in the words.

  “He speaks to me. In the long night.” The figure halted, gesturing, it seemed, toward Dartrek. His dark eyes beheld it, and he grunted in annoyance. The doll’s arm waggled. “In whispers no one but this head can hear. Oh coin of coins! Whereby your glitter might we shine? Might not your light yet lead us home?” She giggled at herself and pulled her doll up high. “He is troubled. As I. And the world shifts with him. Marching, always marching. But men, I suppose, will find themselves in war.”

  War? Riddles stalked the girl, but they knew where he was, and if war stalked him…Does she speak of Effise? A tingle rode the thought. If there were a way to have at information beyond the beck and call of riders or birds, then they could move with that much more reassurance.

  With care, she kept that enthusiasm from her words. “What do you mean? They march?”

  “It draws near enough to home. Dreads it, he. Longs for it. And the girl and he, they walk through different paths, as the blood descends. The Company is sundered.”

  “The Company? You mean the army?”

  “I mean his company.” The doll drew still in her lap, and the witch stared it down, brows scrunching tight. “He does not speak of them. It is…” Usuri blinked and the train of thought twisted. “But the army, soon, I should suppose—the weak and weary masses, they march toward no end. And the margrave, I think, will soon know what the Effisians know…”

  Charlotte fell on her then, coming about the front of Usuri and shaking her by the shoulders. “Speak plainly, girl. What is this? What army? What moves?”

  A frown darkened the whole girl’s face. Dartrek took a step closer. “A kiss to king and country.” With effortless grace, the witch leaned forward and planted such a kiss on Charlotte’s cheek. “A count is not the only one what sees a crown unjustly laid. And a little bird is not the only one that would sing the petty-pretty song of rule.” Then the kiss fell on the other. Charlotte let her hands fall away.