Evrane had told Vivia the story long ago, before Serafin had banished his sister from the city forever.
“And,” Vivia continued, “as the Queen-in-Waiting, I decide who wears the title of Admiral of the Royal Forces. And I haven’t appointed you. I still remain Admiral, and so I will form all strategy moving forward. Meanwhile, you will cease all planning with the navy and soil-bound, and whatever steps you have taken for advancing north are now over.
“As for these messages you have been getting, that ends today. From now on, those missives will come to me. The city of Lovats and the people of Nubrevna must—and will—come first in this war.”
As Vivia spoke these words, as they bubbled up from some place in her spine she’d never known existed, her father transformed. In seconds, the Nihar rage had ignited. She could see it in the rising of his shoulders, in the compression of his lips. And if she wanted to, she could still prevent it. If she wanted to, she could stop the explosion from snapping free.
All she had to do was apologize. Grovel and beg. Exactly as she’d done her entire life.
And perhaps that was what a good daughter would do. That was what a loving, loyal daughter would do. But maybe she wasn’t any of those things, and maybe she had no interest in sharing the glory or sharing the blame.
Not anymore. Not with him.
“You are welcome to attend the High Council meeting this afternoon,” she said, popping her chin high. “Your advice and experience are always appreciated, Father.” Then, without another word and without a backward glance, Vivia left the royal bedroom.
No regrets, keep moving.
No shouts followed her, but they would come eventually. They always came eventually.
Three steps into the hallway became ten, and still no bellows sounded from Serafin’s room. It was not until she turned out of the royal wing, her guards moving into formation around her, that her father’s roar finally crashed out.
She merely walked onward with a new purpose in her stride. For the Raider King was on his way, and Vivia had a city—and an army—to get ready.
TWENTY-NINE
The Cleaved marked Merik’s way. In Poznin, they lined up shoulder to shoulder, just as they had the night before, circling around trees and ponds and fallen homes. He passed city squares that had once been open to the night sky, but now were thick with oaks and beech. He saw statues choked by ivy, graveyards swallowed by thorns, and gallows reduced to skeletons by moss and rot.
All of it was overrun by Cleaved. Always the Cleaved, standing sentry with eyes that stared into nothing and faces gaunt with hunger. Merik didn’t understand how they lived when clearly they did not eat, drink, or perhaps even move.
Merik himself was ravenous. Esme had offered him no food since Kullen had dropped him here, and even water had been scarce. Twice, she had admitted she perhaps ought to feed him, but both times she’d forgotten. Or perhaps her words were no more than another game, another experiment. Knife wounds had not claimed him, but maybe starvation would.
Near the northern edges of Poznin, Merik passed a half-collapsed, half-flooded building. White stone turned to brown, wood flooring had long since rotted away, and the roof had fallen in, leaving only high, crooked walls and a staircase leading nowhere. All of it surrounded a murky pool lined with cattails. Sunlight gleamed down, a beautiful view, were it not for all the corpses.
Tens of them, all ages and races, floated atop the water. And Merik couldn’t help but wonder if the Cleaved had entered because they had wanted to or if the Puppeteer had commanded these deaths upon them.
Chills whispered over Merik’s skin. His feet slowed to a stop. A corpse with a square shield on her back floated by. A breeze swished at the cattails.
There was something about this place. Something cool and calming that called to Merik, begged him to enter the pool and find release. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had stepped in. Ice swept against his shins. Another step, it reached his knees. Another step, it gushed into his boots—and that finally startled him back to the present.
He lurched around, panic slicing through his brain. His footing failed. He splashed into the pond. A frigid dunk that reached his chest and left him floundering amidst the cattails. Come, sang the water, pulling at him. Come in and find release.
But Merik was not ready for that kind of release. Not yet. He wanted to stay alive—very much so—and to escape by another way. Truly escape.
Cam and Ryber were still out there, and Merik would get back to them. And Kullen … the Fury … Merik hadn’t given up on him either.
Merik floundered to his feet, water splashing and reeds slapping, and scrabbled from the water. He was running by the time he reached the shore, and he kept on running until the pond and the corpses and the waters that sang to him were well out of sight.
On he walked, freezing now with the pond’s waters soaking him through. He was still damp by the time he reached the outskirts of Poznin. The moon was halfway through its descent, and open pasture spread for as far as Merik could see. Here, stone buildings remained mostly intact, only wind and storm and rot to tear away the wood.
And here, the chill wind bit twice as fiercely. These were the Windswept Plains—an ocean of grass and air currents that should have stirred at Merik’s magic. Should have coaxed it to life and thrummed within his lungs.
Instead, he felt nothing.
More Cleaved awaited him on the plains, spaced out now. One every fifty paces, skeletal figures that shot up from the grass. He saw no end to the rolling hills, and no end to the Cleaved either.
Until at last, just after dawn, Merik spotted the shrine he needed nestled in the sloping lowland between two hills. Beside him stood a final Cleaved, a hulking man with tattered furs and heavy boots. He looked like a Northman, like the tribal hunters that lived on the outskirts of the Sleeping Lands, where the tundra still remained habitable. As Merik had with every other person he’d passed, he wondered how this man had gotten here. He wondered if he had any family.
Either way, the man was nothing but a walking corpse now.
Far on the horizon, smoke feathered. A village or farm, perhaps, and the urge to run that way, to beg for aid—it squeezed in Merik’s empty belly. It burned inside his feet. This hunger wasn’t like the pond that had sucked him in against his will. This was his brain and his body in concert, and it was the true release, the true escape he sought.
But only if he was fast, only if Esme did not follow—and of course, she would. She or the Fury would follow no matter where Merik went, and that truth was as guaranteed as Noden’s watery end. So long as this collar bound Merik, he was Esme’s favorite toy.
Merik left the Cleaved Northman behind and stumbled down to the shrine. Please, Noden, he begged with each step. Please, let there be food. It was all he thought of as he picked up speed, almost sprinting by the time the hill flattened into lowland.
The standing stone towered larger than the one from the forest, and no grass clotted its base. Only dark soil, churned by feet and hooves. Merik had eyes only for the food, though. Fruits, bread, a wheel of cheese, and even a dried pork leg … Merik chased away the bugs and feasted. He ate so much, so fast, that he made himself sick. Still, he kept eating, gulping and swallowing until his stomach bloated and nausea grew thick in his throat. Then, he crawled to the central standing stone and slouched against it.
He lost all awareness of time, even dozing off at one point. It wasn’t until a cricket landed on his head that he startled awake. The sun had moved; the stone’s shadow stretched across him. He trembled from the cold, yet Esme was not inside his mind—she had not come at all today.
Merik didn’t know what that meant.
He hauled himself up, legs aching. He had a job to do, and it was best to do it before Esme finally checked in, with fangs bared. Gemstones, gemstones, gemstones. That was what she’d wanted, so that was what he would get. By the handful, he scooped them from the dark earth and dropped them into a drawstring
satchel she had given him. They glistened everywhere, all colors and sizes. This shrine was even more beloved than the last. So many offerings for a goddess Esme claimed did not exist.
Funny that Merik had not noticed how many items were here. All he had seen was the food. Now, though, he noticed dolls and bowls, flowers and rush-woven mats. And now, he noticed the knife.
It rested atop one of the smaller stones, sheathed in wood with beautifully intricate leaves carved across it.
Merik wanted that knife.
He glanced around, as if Esme might be mere paces away, ready to pounce. Ready to punish him for daring to handle a weapon.
He saw nothing within the grass. He sensed no voice inside his brain.
Cautiously, he picked up the blade by its sheath. Wind scraped against him, tugging at bright red tassels on the hilt. Then steel hissed on metal as he slid the knife free. It shone in the afternoon sun, sharp and beautifully forged. A master’s weapon.
Oh, Merik wanted this knife.
He glanced at his boots, at the spot where his breeches tucked in, filthy but whole. Maybe he could tuck it in there, out of sight and where it wouldn’t interfere with his movements. He bent and pulled his pant leg free.
A shadow lengthened over him. A shadow shaped like a man.
Merik jerked upright and spun, heart shooting into his throat. Then he stumbled back a step.
The Cleaved from the hilltop gaped at Merik, mouth working as if he wanted to speak. But of course the Cleaved could not speak, and of course, Esme must have sent the man. Merik lifted his new knife. He would kill a Cleaved if he had to; he’d done so before.
Except the Cleaved was not attacking. The Cleaved simply stood there, swaying, shivering, and trying to work his throat.
Something was wrong. Something was off.
At last, a sound like paper ripping tore from the man’s lungs. A sharp breath later, the man repeated that sound.
He’s speaking, Merik realized, and in that same moment, he realized the man’s pupils were no longer black but iris blue. And his skin, his veins—all shadows were gone, leaving only a natural, weathered texture behind.
The man was no longer Cleaved.
Merik straightened at the same instant the man reached for Merik, beseeching. Then the former Cleaved crashed to the grass.
Merik rushed forward, dropping to the man’s side. “Are you all right?” A stupid question—the man hadn’t eaten in countless weeks, and he had somehow, by some miracle Merik could not fathom, come back from Esme’s cleaving.
Merik left the man and clambered around the stones. The bowls he’d seen earlier had been filled with rainwater. Fresh rain, he guessed, from the storms last night. Certainly fresh enough for a dying man.
He found one bowl, a massive, hammered bronze creation, and, careful not to lose a drop, he staggered back to the Northman. After setting the bowl on the earth, he hauled off his coat, then his shirt. The wind attacked; his bones shook against the sudden frost. Then he got the coat back on.
After dunking a shirt sleeve into the bowl, he brought it to the man’s lips and gently squeezed. Evrane had done this a hundred times when Merik was growing up. A hundred hundred times, bringing the sick and the injured back from the brink of death. She’d done it for Kullen too, after his breathing attacks. And every time, Merik had watched on, hands wringing and terror bright in his chest.
That same terror shone brightly now. This man had somehow survived cleaving; Merik would not let him die.
Time trickled past, moving in time to the water dropping off the cotton. Slowly, the man’s shivering subsided. Slowly, he regained control of his throat, rasping strange words that did not sound like language. Eventually, the man managed to sit up.
The sun was halfway across the eastern sky.
“I cannot understand you,” Merik told him after the man tried, yet again, to communicate. The man pointed as he spoke. First at the stone. Then at the hilltop.
Merik shook his head, trying Cartorran: “I cannot understand you.” He tried Marstoki after that, and Dalmotti and Nubrevnan too. It wasn’t until he attempted Svodish that any comprehension finally marked the man’s face.
“Where?” the man asked, now in Svodish. He pointed again at the stone, at the hilltop.
“Arithuania,” Merik answered.
A frown, more confusion than horror—but the horror came soon enough. “When?”
“Year…” Oh blighted Hell, how did you count double digits in Svodish? Merik couldn’t remember, so he settled on, “Year ten and nine.”
Now the shock came, and with it bile. Before Merik could grab the man and help him, the Northman lurched around and heaved. Water first, in great sprays, then dark bile, and finally nothing but choked air. By the time he finished, tears streamed down the man’s cheeks, tracking pale lines amidst the dirt.
“How?” His red-eyed gaze did not meet Merik’s. “Four years. How?”
Merik exhaled sharply. Four years. Four years. Surely the man had not been Esme’s prisoner for so long.
“Why … heal?” Merik asked. The man had come back from cleaving; Merik wanted—needed—to know how.
But the Northman only shook his head. “Stop,” he said simply. “Dark, then stop.”
Before Merik could try to interpret this, the witch herself returned.
Where are you, Prince?
Merik spun away from the Northman as fast as he could. If Esme could look through his eyes, he did not want her to see. There was still a chance that man could flee; Merik would not let her claim his life again.
“I am at the shrine,” he said, staggering toward the central stone.
Why? A flicker of lightning—a mere caress of pain through Merik’s veins. You should be back to Poznin by now.
“I fell asleep,” he said. “The food offerings made me sick.” Panic crept into Merik’s voice, his words spewing out with frantic urgency. And he let them come that way. With or without a healed Northman to hide, this was how he reacted to Esme.
Especially since the pain was notching higher now.
“Please,” he squeezed out, teeth clenched. “Please, I have gathered gemstones and will walk back now—stop, stop, stop!”
You will run back, Esme commanded, tone dismissive, bored. I will not be happy if you arrive here after midnight. And just like that, her claws retracted.
“I will run,” he agreed, slumping over. He had no idea how he could possibly run that far.
He would deal with that problem later.
For several long moments, Merik sucked in air. It vibrated in his lungs. No magic, only cold and the scent of rock and soil. He stayed this way until he was certain Esme was gone. He stayed this way until the Northman finally rasped, “Help.”
Merik twisted toward him, assuming the man needed help. But no. He was pointing at Merik, then patting at his neck.
“Help,” he repeated, and Merik realized he meant the collar.
“No.” Merik shook his head. “No help for me.” This man wore no collar—none of Esme’s Cleaved did, save Merik. And since it sounded as if this man had no idea how he had healed, then there was nothing at all Merik could do. If he tried to leave, Esme would just summon him right back.
Shuffling back to the man’s side, Merik pointed up the hill. “North.” He pointed again. “Go north. People. Help you. And here…” Merik scooped the knife off the dirt. Its red tassels laughed at him now.
The Northman did not take the knife, though. “You.” Again, he pointed at Merik. Then at his neck. “Use?”
Merik wanted to. He wanted the security of knowing he had protection, that he had some secret weapon Esme did not know of. But what would he even do with the blade? He could not attack her—she would simply attack him, destroy him first. And as gnarled as the logic might be, he was safe in Poznin. Right now, Esme had no desire to kill him. She needed him for the Fury. She needed him for her experiments.
Besides, if she ever turned her Cleaved army on him, a si
ngle knife would do nothing against thousands. This Northman, though—he could use it. He might even need it, trying to reach those people with the fires.
“You,” Merik said again, and this time, he took the man’s skeletal hand and wrapped the man’s fingers around the hilt. “You.”
The man’s papery brow pinched tight. “What … place?” He motioned to the shrine, to the hill he’d come from, and then to Merik’s collar. “What place?”
“A nightmare,” was all Merik replied, wondering why he remembered that word yet he couldn’t remember how to count. Either way, it was the right one to use here. So he said it again: “A nightmare. Run.”
THIRTY
Stix awoke to voices. Not voices inside her head, either, but real voices attached to human throats. They were arguing.
About her.
“We can’t just leave her, Ry.”
“We can’t wait for her to wake up either. We have a job to do, Cam. I promise, we’ll come back for her after that.”
“But what if she wakes up before? Or what if raiders get to her first? Please, Ry. My gut’s tellin’ me we ought to bring her with us.”
A frustrated huff. Then a muttered, “Who’s the Sightwitch here?” A heartbeat later, Stix heard footsteps approach, and when she hauled open her eyelids, light seared across her vision. She winced, arms—weak and sore—rising to block her face.
Where was she?
“You’re awake,” said a young woman with short black hair, warm skin slightly lighter than Stix’s, and eyes of moonlight silver. She held a lantern high, brow tight with worry. “Do you know how you got here?”
Stix shook her head, the faintest of movements. Her brain throbbed. Her body ached. She remembered voices … and water … and a doorway. Not much else.
“Do you know who you are?” the young woman pressed. “Can you remember your name?
“Stacia … Sotar.” Her voice sounded—and felt—like broken razors. Noden curse her, where was she? And why did everything hurt?
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