by Jackson Lear
“Dead?”
Her eyes cracked as she locked onto me.
“Yeah. He’s dead.”
She grimaced as she stabbed me again in my cheek. “We needed one of them to kill him. Not one of us. If they call for your head in recompense the governor will order my father to give you up. It was supposed to be a peaceful mission.”
“A peaceful mission to help a warlord overthrow a king.”
“You know what I mean.”
“His people abducted our people on imperial lands. He gave the okay to have us each tortured. We were prisoners. You were about to be butchered. We broke out. He got in the way.”
“You went to find him.”
“Then history will need to say otherwise.” I held my attention on Alysia. “We were abducted. We were prisoners. We broke out.”
Alysia sighed. Moved onto wrapping my ankle. “The ends do not justify the means.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Okay, fine, if there was no other way then I would be okay with Draegor dying, but I wanted his people to do it, not ours.”
“It stopped being diplomatic long before Zara and I came to get you. We were abducted. That alone is an act of war. We were prisoners. That would compel your father to send an infiltrator or a thug to secure your release using the best judgment of whoever he sent. We broke out and exacted justice fairly. Their alliance is in tatters. If we all leave now no one really needs to go to war.” I took a swig of blood wine, the last I had in the hope that whatever vampire blood there was in it would help to heal my wounds a little quicker.
Alysia scowled and looked away. “I have injured to tend to. You shouldn’t put too much weight on that ankle for a while.” She got up. Left.
I rung out my clothes, now in a full and unhealthy sweat that was just as likely to kill me as a fight to the death, and started to consider lighting a fire to warm me up. It would have to wait.
I did a quick head count. Tried again. Checked up top and ran through the list of names. Trod carefully through the underside of the ship, avoiding a face-full of oars with every step and checking to see who was where.
Someone was missing. I checked again. Ran through our escape as best I could remember.
Zara caught that look in me. “What is it?”
“When was the last time you saw Berik?”
She got there quicker than I expected. “On the roof.”
“Great. We’ve just left someone behind.”
Chapter Seventeen
Loken hauled himself up and down the longboat. “Berik?”
He wasn’t on board.
“Who was the last to see Berik?”
“I don’t think he came back from the rooftop,” said Kilmur.
Loken fell silent, turning from one injured member of the vanguard to another. “Seriously? No one saw him come back?” He was met by a sea of agonized faces.
The realization curdled through my stomach. To think that Berik might have been trapped in a nearby room through our escape, calling out to us while knowing that we were leaving him behind.
Loken pointed to one soldier after another. “Who went up with him? Magnus? What happened?”
“I was blindfolded, sir.”
“Me too,” said Arvid.
Loken stopped in front of Jarmella. The mage was as distraught and guilt-stricken as they came. “What happened?”
Jarmella spluttered over a garbled answer. “I … I don’t know, sir. I think …”
Loken held one hand up. Didn’t even blink. “Deep breath. Start again. What happened?”
Jarmella searched the faces among the soldiers, desperate to see that Berik was still with them. “They took him away. I thought he went back to you in the dungeons, I swear.”
Loken’s chest swelled as he struggled to keep himself in check. “You told me that was everyone.”
“I … I’m sorry … I saw Magnus and Arvid with you. I swear I thought they returned him.”
I interrupted. “I thought Berik was taken back to the dungeons as well.”
Loken shifted his anger onto me. “Did you see him?”
“I saw them take someone out of Jarmella’s room in a hood. Jarmella told me it was Berik. A couple of minutes later I saw the same people lead a hooded person into the dungeons.”
“That was Magnus,” growled Loken. He looked to the top of the ship, no doubt considering a whole host of bad ideas – whether to turn around and go get him or to leave Berik behind for good. “Fuck!” Loken stormed up top. We kept sailing forward.
Jarmella fell to the side, sobbing. Saskia went to comfort her.
A few faces turned towards me. I don’t want to say that they appeared confrontational, but they needed to look somewhere. So I gave them something to do: “Strip the dead mercenaries. Divide up their dry clothes amongst anyone who went overboard.”
I carried a warm cloak up top. Found Loken at the aft of the ship, looking back at Brilskeep in the foggy distance. He turned slowly, looking me up and down, skeptical of the enemy outfit I had donned. I stood bare foot, utterly numb, with my boots firmly between my fingers in case I was forced overboard in a hurry. I handed over a spare cloak.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Loken started to strip and wring his clothes out. “Can you swim?”
“A little. If Berik has been caught and kept alive, how much does he know?”
“He’ll know as much as the rest of us,” said Loken, still with an icy tone in his voice. “That woman. Elizandria. What exactly did you talk about?”
“She wanted me to get all of us to leave before a massacre happened.”
“Of course she did. And we just killed four of her people. So why did she choose you of all people?”
“Because the rest of you follow orders no matter what the cost.”
He lingered, anger rising through him. “So you’ll jeopardize the mission here and leave everyone else to pick up the pieces of your mess?”
I ignored his eagerness to pick a fight, mostly because I didn’t want to be thrown into an icy lake with miles to swim and thirty soldiers looking the other way. “Has Berik ever been interrogated before?”
“No,” growled Loken.
“If he confesses everything he knows, how much trouble will that get us in?”
“You now care about trouble?”
“All right, let me put this plainly to get through your bad mood: there is a vampire still alive in Brilskeep. If Berik is turned into one of them he’ll lose all loyalty to Ispar, to General Kasera, even to his own family.”
“He won’t.”
“He will. In literally a heart beat he will. Give him some human blood and it’ll be the greatest high he has ever experienced and he’ll want more, all the time, until he’s dead. He’ll want to terrorize everyone he knows because that’s how transformed people operate.”
“He won’t.”
“No? Have you ever heard vampires on a feeding frenzy?”
“No.”
“Then how about werewolves? Lavarta said that someone in your army lost a bunch of horses to werewolves a few years back. Was that you?”
A shadow fell over Loken’s eyes, drawing his attention away. “Yes.”
“Right. Same kind of thing. A big enough bite from either of those creatures and one of us turns to their side. It’s not just a maybe he will turn. You know he will. So let’s start again: if Berik willingly tells the vampires everything he knows, how bad will that be?”
Loken simmered, gripping the guardrail with such force that it should’ve burst within his grip. “I don’t know. I doubt he knows much of use about Agnarr or whatever Miss Kasera knows or intended to do, but he knows an awful lot about General Kasera and our journey here. He knows that Miss Kasera is married to Commander Lavarta, that the commander is stationed in the new fort in Anglaterra, he knows where the fort is located, how it’s defended, who the senior members are, how secure the nearby towns ar
e, and everything between the fort and Erast.” Loken turned his sullen look towards me. “And he knows a lot about you.”
“More than just our time together?”
“More than that. The general wanted you dead up until a few months ago. When you strolled into his compound he went to make sure it was the last time you or anyone like you did so, so we worked on its defenses. Then one day he announced that he’d hired you, but we had to keep that to ourselves. His old man warned me in particular just before we set off with Miss Kasera.”
I remained quiet, figuring that Loken would either succumb to a forceful blurting out or become so riled up that honor compelled him to remain silent.
“What exactly happened to Delen in Torne?” he asked.
“He died.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He walked into a trap. The people who set it killed him.”
“Set by people like you?”
“By mercenaries, yes.”
Loken stared back, trying to figure me out with some cavalry insight bullshit. “Why is it that everyone seems to warn everyone else about you?”
“You should ask them. Not me.”
“I have. Even Kasera Senior – I don’t think you even met him – cautioned me. He said that despite you selling out your own people and being a cold-blooded killer there are some who seem quite fond of you. He emphasized that this could become a problem, since Miss Kasera and Zara might rule in your favor over mine, especially over military matters. You’ve never been in the military have you, Mr Raike?”
“No. Never have been. Never will.”
“So why would Senior believe that his granddaughter would listen to you instead of me? I mean, I appreciate that you helped Día, and I saw how effective you were in Torne, but I’ve known Miss Kasera for fifteen years. I taught her to ride. I joined her on several excursions and I was present for her wedding. I led the honor guard. And then I saw her defend you with her life. So what are you, her secret lover?”
I snorted.
“It’s either that or blackmail,” said Loken.
“He’s not black mailing me, Lieutenant,” said Alysia, as she stopped behind me. “And go easy on the accusations. Raike is a member of my household. He’s been vetted as thoroughly as anyone in the vanguard.”
Loken held his tongue, a snarl rising through his features as he fought off a retort. Wisdom superseded as he gave her a diplomatic nod. “My lady.” And went to check on the troops.
Alysia rested her hands on the guardrail beside me. “I need to know what happened in the castle while you were on your own.”
“I was taken up to the roof by the vampire and the bear. Beaten. Threatened. Then someone came to say that you had requested to see me. I was released. I met you. Was ambushed again, this time by mercenaries. The blue-eyed mercenary queen talked to me on the rooftop while Zara was nearby. She wanted me to get us out of Brilskeep before a massacre happened. She said it was going to be inevitable at this point, that too many noble warlords were riled up and that tonight they were going to strike. Before any deal could be struck the bear returned. He dragged me away and threw me back into the dungeon. There I waited until Elizandria opened one of the murder holes in the ceiling. I climbed out. Got a dagger from her. Was advised again that we should leave. I decided it was a good idea.”
“You decided?”
“Yes.”
“Despite everything I have asked of you.”
“Yes. Despite all that I decided that getting us all out of Brilskeep was a better idea than staying.”
Alysia squinted back at me. “And if there was no massacre planned at all and we … you … were responsible for causing one?”
“I’m sure by now Zara has told you of the dead people we found in the great hall. We didn’t cause that. Something else was happening. You don’t just set off an explosion under a castle unless you can take out a lot of people at the same time. Whatever happened tonight, they’re going to blame us for it. No question there. But even before all of that happened I had seen enough to know that we were in a shitty situation, one that was about to get a lot worse. It was time to leave.”
Alysia jammed her lips together and shook her head. “You did not have that authority.”
“I had the responsibility. I still do. Yours was to try the diplomatic approach. Through no fault of your own you didn’t have enough time for it to succeed. Mine is to get you out of trouble if it finds you.”
She strained a look, forcing herself to remain calm and collected like she had always been trained to do, but even so she was starting to shake with nerves. “I wanted you to give me a chance and you took that away from me.”
“Do you really think I did all of this to fuck you over?”
She couldn’t even look me in the eye any more.
“Do you really think I did all of this to fuck you over?” I asked again.
She drew in a deep breath. Turned away. “We’ll come back to that.” Calmer now. Bottling things up for later. “You and Zara found dead people in the great hall. Who were they?”
“I recognized a couple of outfits and braids from the big meeting we had when we first met Draegor. Who they are specifically, I don’t know. Some were dressed better than others. At a guess I’d say there were six nobles and eight mercenaries.”
“What do you think happened?”
I needed a moment to think through everything I had seen. The tipping point was seeing that the crew had been left as bait. “I think Draegor was behind a lot of tonight’s massacre but someone else took a few extra steps. From what Mikael was saying, if Draegor didn’t like a particular noble he had no problem throwing them off the top of his castle, but that only works for keeping everyone at bay. If he needed to unite them into a cause such as going after Agnarr or attacking one of Ispar’s newest provinces then he’d need adequate justification. The best kind is revenge. He targeted whoever wasn’t pulling their weight – or maybe whoever was trying to undermine him – and he could’ve used their death to rally their forces. He could kill off whoever he had a problem with and blame us for it at the same time.”
“But now he’s dead.”
“Yes. With any luck the alliance with the vampires is dead as well.”
Alysia fell silent, disturbing it with a gentle tapping of her fingers as she worked through our problem. As the clouds parted I caught a curious sight just beside us. Instead of being surrounded by miles of water we seemed to be hugging the coastline.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Faersrock.”
A groan consumed me.
“We came to help put Agnarr on the throne,” said Alysia. “We owe it to him to keep our word.”
“Draegor sent a couple of vampires to pick up some riders. I’ll bet you anything they’re heading for Agnarr right now.”
“Then we need to warn him. There’s still a chance we can pull this off.”
“We have three days to get back to Orkust before your husband comes after you.”
“I expect that he’s already on his way.” Alysia drummed her fingernails once more across the railing before coming to a deliberate stop. “We’re not done with this conversation. You killed a king while on a diplomatic mission and acted against my wishes.”
“I killed a warlord who was going to kill you. What do you think the captain of his guard was going to do to you while wielding an ax in a ferocious rage?”
Alysia drew in another deep breath, not quite realizing how close she came to dying but I was sure that would come as soon as the chaos had settled.
“I still want to find out how we were ambushed,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. Tired. Almost defeated. “Does that really matter?”
“Of course. Draegor didn’t betray us. Either it was someone on this ship or Agnarr.”
“What exactly do you plan on doing if you find out it was Agnarr?” Alysia closed her eyes, wary of the answer I was about to give her.
&nb
sp; “I’m not sure. What would Ispar do to him if our mission was authorized by the senate?”
She needed another deep breath. “They’d probably mount his head on a wall, build a fortress on top of Faersrock and call it ‘Agnarr’s Mistake.’” She glanced up at me. “But if this gets back to the senate before we have a chance to control the failure of our mission, it’ll be your head mounted on a wall, my family imprisoned for authorizing regicide, and the city you and I grew up in would be renamed ‘Kasera’s Mistake.’”
Chapter Eighteen
Mikael wheezed as we carried him up to the top on a makeshift stretcher. His skin was sour and a cold sweat was close to killing him. He needed a doctor and he needed one now. We just didn’t have anyone on board. I handed over the last of our blood wine.
“Thank you,” he murmured. He took a swig. Deep breath. Gulped some more, eased himself back, then flicked his eyes towards me, Zara, Alysia, and Loken, all crowding around him. “I’ll be okay.”
“Good. When you and Miss Kasera were separated, what happened to you?”
He groaned and waved a hand like he was wafting away a bad case of morning breath. “They threw me into the lake.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re assholes!”
“And you didn’t die.”
“Does it look like I died?” He pushed himself up onto one elbow and immediately regretted it. Then he took another look at everyone standing really close to him. “Oh, come on! Whatever you’re thinking, I didn’t do it.”
“What are we thinking?” I asked.
“I don’t know! Just … drop me off at a doctor’s in Lietsmar. A proper doctor. One with a lot of medicine. Please? I don’t want to lose my leg.”
“Why did they throw you into the lake?”
“Didn’t I just say because they’re assholes?!”
“Then what did you say to get them to pull you out of the water so quickly?”
He froze, blinking quickly. “I don’t know! ‘Let me out’? ‘Oh gods, oh gods, I’m dying’?”
I snatched the skin of blood wine from his grip.
“Hey! I need … Okay, fine, you know what? Be an insufferable dick! At least there are witnesses to you being an asshole, picking on a guy with a broken leg. Is that really what Isparian missions are all about? Dicking around the one guy who helped them when no one else would?”
