by Gary Meehan
“You manipulative bi—” Damon sighed and leaned on the railing that protected the walkway. Rust flaked off and floated down to the lake below. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”
“No, you’re right,” said Megan. “I am my mother’s daughter. For better and for worse. But I meant what I said. Show me you care about something more than your own skin. Please.”
“Why do you care about turning Sener? You have an army.”
“Because I’m not prepared to see hundreds of thousands die in a siege. Because I don’t want to give Fordel the excuse to march his guns into the Realm. Because I want to right a decades-old wrong.”
Damon snorted. “You want to piss off the witches, the priests and the Snow Cities?”
“What do you say?”
“Can I at least wait until nightfall?”
thirty-one
Damon slipped back into the palace and considered his options. He could give it an hour then turn back, tell Megan he couldn’t find Sener—how likely was he to agree to talk to Megan, anyway, never mind to her request? He was on a fool’s errand, all to assuage Megan’s conscience. It was an errand to assuage his own conscience too, though he doubted risking his life would gain him absolution from what he had done—or not done—up in the Kartiks.
A barked order echoing off the stone walls made his testicles retreat into his body with an implicit cry of “Nice knowing you.”
“You! Stop!”
“Me?”
“See anyone else skulking around in the shadows?”
“No,” said Damon, “but they might be really good at it.”
The soldier approached. Steel armor. Not good. He was one of the original True, not a convert they had press-ganged. The original followers tended to be a little less flexible.
“What’re you doing?”
“Skulking,” said Damon. “I thought we’d already established that.”
“Why?”
“Are we talking philosophically, theologically or ontologically?”
The soldier looked him up and down. One of the Hilites had given up his True uniform. Damon was hoping most of the witches wouldn’t recognize him, and it wasn’t as if they would be expecting him to return.
“I have a message for Captain Sener,” said Damon. “From the Mother.” He didn’t specify which one.
“The Mother wants to speak to Sener?”
Damon nodded. “She said it’s urgent.”
“And she sent you?” said the soldier.
Damon nodded.
The soldier considered for a moment, then beckoned to Damon. Damon grabbed a torch from its sconce and followed. Through darkened corridors they marched, running into only one other soldier, who had a whispered conversation with Damon’s escort before rushing off. Most of the troops must be manning the walls, guarding Gwyneth, or out in the city, indulging in the odd spot of miscellaneous oppression.
They descended into the basement. Stone walls became iron bars. The air became thicker, not altogether pleasant to breathe. The hairs on Damon’s neck rose. They were in the dungeons: row upon row of cells, fetid black holes gouged out of the ground beneath the palace. Most were empty, home only to obese rats who screeched defiantly at them as they marched past, all except one. A man in the scraps of a uniform hunched on the floor. Sener.
“Saviors . . .” whispered Damon.
A woman’s voice made him whirl round. “Hello, lover.”
“This is not what it looks like,” said Damon.
“What does it look like?” asked Gwyneth. Tobrytan and a squad of soldiers were at her side.
The torch burning close to his head was making Damon’s temple sweat. “I’m not sure. It just seemed the right thing to say.”
“You had a message for Sener? A message from me?”
Gwyneth took a step forward. The soldiers moved up with her. Damon would have been impressed with the synchronization had it not brought the witches’ axes a yard closer. He looked around, calculating escape routes, wondering if throwing his torch at Gwyneth would give him enough of a head start. No chance.
“I appreciate you taking the time out for a bit of melodramatic intimidation,” he said, “but shouldn’t you be doing something more practical? Like getting the hell out of New Statham or negotiating the terms of your surrender?”
“Why would we surrender?” asked Gwyneth.
“You’ve only got a couple of months before a besieging army turns up,” said Damon. “An army with bigger guns than yours.”
“We can hold out. We have God on our side.”
“Without the Saviors?”
“Who says we don’t have them?”
Damon was thrown. There was a satisfied smirk on Gwyneth’s face. This wasn’t a bluff. There was reality behind her words. A horrible reality.
“We allowed our enthusiasm, our hubris, to get the better of us,” continued Gwyneth. “We should not have shown ourselves before we had secured the Saviors. We tried to reunify the Realm before we were ready. God gave us a glimpse of what we could achieve, then allowed the Apostate to destroy it.”
She moved in closer, close enough Damon could catch her rosewater scent above the stench of body odors permeating the cells, close enough he could see the rise and fall of her breathing underneath the white silk of her gown, close enough to dread the fanaticism burning in her eyes.
“We did not fulfill Joanne’s prophecy—I might have known Megan would let me down—that is why we failed. I’ve taken steps to correct that.”
“What . . . what kind of steps?”
Gwyneth took Damon’s free hand and placed it on her stomach. “Congratulations,” she whispered into his ear.
The torch fell from Damon’s grasp and sputtered away on the damp flagstones. He stumbled backward, trying to put whatever distance he could between Gwyneth, her revelation, and himself. Witches grabbed him, held him still.
Gwyneth smiled and nodded. “You’re going to be a daddy.”
“Posthumously of course,” added Tobrytan.
Born to a dead father. “You can’t . . .” stammered Damon. “You can’t be . . .”
The witches seemed to be mocking Damon’s distress. Gwyneth had used him and she was going to kill him and his child would be one of them—cruel and heartless, hated and feared. Not because of their own choice or own mistakes, but because their father had condemned them to be so.
“Wait . . . wait. There’s two Saviors. What’re you going to do about the other one? There’s no way you’re getting Megan pregnant again.”
Gwyneth pouted. “You think I don’t learn from my mistakes?” She motioned to the soldiers, who parted to form a corridor through their ranks. “I’d like you to meet my sister.”
Damon was confused. The witches had captured Megan? No, the young woman who stepped forward was Taite, Sener’s paramour. Former paramour, it was safe to say, judging from the look on the captain’s face.
“When is your birthday, sister?”
“The sixth day of midsummer, Your Majesty. Three hundred and thirty-seven years after Unification.” The same day as Gwyneth and Megan. And four score years after the parents of Jolecia and Ahebban.
“Attor took Joanne’s prophecy too literally,” said Gwyneth. “Taite and I were born under the same stars. We’re astrological sisters. God guided me to her.”
The words of the prophecy played themselves out in Damon’s mind. “‘And in their sixteenth year,’” he found himself muttering, “‘a Savior each will bear.’ Aren’t you seventeen? And you’ll be eighteen by the time—”
“Joanne was wrong,” snapped Gwyneth. She recovered her demeanor. “A minor mistake. She could not see the future perfectly.”
“She does keep making minor mistakes, doesn’t she?” said Damon. “She can’t get the ages right, the sexes of the Saviors. What next? Maybe it wasn’t four score years, maybe it was five.”
He anticipated the blow and was rolling with it even as the ax shaft smashed into his shoulder bl
ades. It didn’t stop it hurting like mad, didn’t stop the nausea clamping his stomach from erupting into acidic mush that burned his throat.
The witches holding Damon wrenched his arms so hard he wondered if their planned method of execution was dismemberment. “I know things,” he said, squirming in a vain effort to relieve the pressure. “Useful things. About Megan and the Hilites and their plans. You don’t have to kill me.”
Gwyneth stroked his cheek. “We’re not going to kill you.”
“You aren’t?”
“Not until dawn anyway. The hour mandated by the Book of the True for executions.”
Damon slumped on the stone block and stared up at the rancid ceiling of the cell, the throbbing in his arms and shoulders nothing compared to what tormented his thoughts. A baby; his baby; Gwyneth’s baby. He’d had little choice in the matter, but that didn’t exempt him from fatherhood. Now his child was about to suffer the same fate the witches had had lined up for Megan’s.
Megan. He still had a mission to complete for her, for Eleanor. He waited until the receding footsteps indicated the retreat of the last of the guards, before scurrying across the cell to Sener. The captain had resumed his maudlin hunch, contemplating the wet stones under his knees. Gwyneth had used him like she’d used Damon and Megan and the poor saps she’d got to father the first pair of babies. Damon had met one of them once—Wade, he thought his name was—a frightened boy who’d realized too late what Gwyneth had in store for him. He’d run away. It hadn’t saved him.
Damon shook Sener. The captain raised his head and regarded him with a weary expression. “What?”
“I can get us out of here,” said Damon, pulling out the knife and spike he had concealed in his boot.
“And then what?”
“And then there’s someone who wants to talk to you,” said Damon.
Sener’s mouth started forming a “who” before he answered his own question. “Her?”
“You want to live? End the war? Talk to Megan. Listen to her.”
“What can she offer?”
“She’s Queen of Werlavia. She has every force on the continent aligned against you,” said Damon. “She can offer you anything she damn well pleases.”
“At what price?”
“Well . . .”
“I will not turn against the True,” said Sener. “It would be a betrayal of God and the Saviors.”
Damon had been expecting this. Honor before sense: it was practically the witches’ motto. He had one final roll to him, but was it worth the price he’d pay for it? This time he couldn’t load the die, this time he was at the mercy of fate and a large man who could get very angry very quickly.
“How about turning against the people who killed your father?”
“What?”
“Tobrytan killed the general. Smothered him.”
“How do . . . ? How do you know?”
Damon edged out of Sener’s reach. “I was there.”
“Why?” asked Sener, his voice low and dangerous.
“Because”—bars banged into Damon’s back—“because Gwyneth sent me there. To . . . to kill him.”
The air between Damon and Sener crystallized into ice. “You were going to kill my father?”
“You’re over-focusing on side issues.”
Sener uncurled himself and stalked toward Damon. Damon fumbled with the knife, held it between them. Sener slapped it away without breaking stride.
“It was Gwyneth and Tobrytan who wanted him dead, not me,” gabbled Damon as Sener reached for him. “I didn’t even touch him. I was just trying to stay alive.” Fingers wrapped around his throat. “Kill me, what do you gain? Who avenges your father?”
“God will avenge him.”
Damon’s vision blurred. “Are you not”—he gasped for a scrap of breath—“the instrument of God’s vengeance?”
Sener paused his squeezing. Damon sucked in air while he had the chance. “And I suppose He sent you as His messenger?”
“Was my arrival at this time a coincidence?” said Damon. “Think about it.”
He reached up and plucked Sener’s hands from his neck. The captain didn’t resist. Damon crouched down, retrieved the knife and sidled over to the cell gate.
“Keep a look out while I attack this lock.”
“Are you one of us? Or one of them?”
“I’m one of me.”
Damon slipped his tools into the lock. It was old and basic. “I didn’t want to come here. I’d be happy to see you all starve or burn or die in a hail of gunfire.” And I could really have done without knowing about a child who’s doomed no matter who out of Megan or Gwyneth wins this bloody war.
The lock clicked open. Damon eased the gate open as gently as he could, wincing as the rusty iron shrieked as if the souls of the desperate were trapped in the metal.
“Give me the knife,” said Sener.
“Can I trust you?”
“As much as I can trust you.”
“In that case . . .” Damon pulled the knife away from Sener’s outstretched hand. “Only kidding.” He handed the blade over. “Happy stabbing.”
He turned his back as Sener crept down the dungeon, tried to ignore the sounds of metal ripping through flesh, of bones crunching against stone, pleas for mercy cut brutally short. Damon hadn’t killed the guards directly or forced them to fight for Gwyneth or to believe in the witches’ cause, but he shared responsibility for their deaths. He could see why Megan was so desperate to avoid a siege. Having that many deaths on your conscience would be unbearable.
thirty-two
Megan took Afreyda down to the bottom of the cistern and washed her wounds in its icy waters. Gently as she could, she applied the ointment as Damon had instructed and re-bandaged her. Each time Afreyda whimpered or grabbed Megan to distract herself, Megan felt a lash almost as bad as the ones Afreyda had suffered.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It was my decision to go,” said Afreyda.
“I could have ordered you not to,” said Megan. “I should have ordered you not to. I am queen.”
“And if you had, what would have happened? We might be safe in Hil, but Damon could have been killed, we would have lost the formula”—Afreyda gave Megan a knowing look that made her wince—“and there would be nothing to stop Fordel. We can speculate on what we should have done or not done but we cannot know. We can only deal with the things we did do.”
Megan helped Afreyda into a spare Hilite uniform. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Trying to reach a deal with the witches.”
“You are the queen,” said Afreyda. “It is not for me to say.”
“You could just say no, you know,” said Megan. Afreyda stayed silent. “It’ll probably come to nothing. Damon probably won’t find this Sener, and even if he does he probably won’t agree.”
“But whatever happens, we are leaving, right?”
“I guess . . .”
“What?” said Afreyda, her voice sharpening.
“It’s just that . . . my niece is in there . . . What’s going to happen to her?”
“I am sure she will be fine.”
“Really?” said Megan. “She’s my family”—she looked Afreyda in the eye—“our family. I can’t let her—”
Afreyda’s head snapped up. A white glow dancing about up among the stone treetops: Damon’s strange chemical. A soldier called out a command to halt. The echoes repeated his order like a childish ghost.
“They are back,” said Afreyda. “We should . . .”
“I suppose,” said Megan. “You OK to climb?”
They hauled themselves up a ladder and on to the network of walkways that crisscrossed the heights of the cistern. Damon had a companion, a bulky man in the remnants of a witch’s uniform. He was carrying an ax that didn’t look a stranger to decapitation.
“Are you Sener?” Megan asked.
The man nodded. “And you’re . . . What do I call you exactly?”
&n
bsp; “I’m not fussed.”
“You don’t look like her.”
“I’m a little lesser in the ear department,” said Megan.
“It’s not that . . .” Sener shook his head. “This waste of space”—he half indicated, half swiped in Damon’s direction—“tells me you want to talk.”
“This waste of space broke you out of prison.”
“Joanne’s prophecy,” said Megan. “What do you think of it?”
“About the same as you, I imagine.”
“You have no interest in my daughter.”
“I couldn’t care less about the brat.”
Megan flinched but swallowed her reaction. “And there are others who think like you do?”
“Possibly . . .”
This time anger did get the better of her. “Don’t be bloody coy,” she snapped. “I didn’t come here for some diplomatic flirtation. How many are there of you, and are you prepared to take up arms against your fellow wi—your fellow True?”
“Some of the original True are still loyal to me and my father,” said Sener, “and the conversion of some of the auxiliaries was less than”—he glanced at Damon—“sincere. What do we get in return?”
“Your lives. Your freedom.”
“Your forgiveness?”
“You have got to be—”
Sener gave her a humorless smile. “Just seeing how far you’re willing to go.”
“Even I have my limits.”
“We are not converting to the Faith,” said Sener. “No priest will tell us what to believe.”
“I’m not asking you to convert,” said Megan. “People can worship whom they want, how they want, where they want, when they want. It’s no damned business of mine.” She looked him in the eye. “But I don’t want anyone left who could be a threat to my daughter.”
Sener bowed to Megan, possibly only half mockingly. “And so begins the glorious reign of Megan . . . Megan the what? The Reunifier?”
