[Sin Eater's Daughter 3] The Scarecrow Queen

by Melinda Salisbury

  “You’ve got a lot of making up to do, Merek Belmis,” I say. “So I’ll see you back here by morning. All right?”

  “As you command, my lady.” He sweeps into a bow and smiles again, before jogging after the others, who’ve very sensibly not waited for him.

  I watch until the gleam of his armour fades, and then close the doors.

  There is no one in the refectory; Bron and Dilys, and assumedly Ymilla too, have gone to bed. I make my way down the women’s corridor, heading to my room. Errin isn’t there when I get there, and I’m too restless to sleep, so I leave and walk back to the kitchen, fetching some wine and two goblets. I take them to the laboratory, sure that’s where I’ll find Errin, and as I get closer I can hear her muttering to herself. Despite everything, I start to smile.

  But my smile dies when something in the room breaks, and she cries out. “No, please. No.”

  Panicked by the terror in her tone, I pick up my pace and run into the room.

  Errin stands alone, with the box of Opus Mortem in front of her. In one hand she clutches a vial, and as I watch she drops it to the floor and stamps on it, where the shards and liquid join others there. She looks over at me, tears streaming down her face, even as she reaches for another vial.

  “What are you doing?”

  She stares at me and lifts a second vial, holding it up so the liquid glows white in the light.

  “Is something wrong with them?”

  She drops it to the floor and crushes it beneath her heel.

  “Errin? Errin, stop it!”

  I rush at her and she snatches a third vial, screaming “Help me!” even as she throws it at me. I duck and it hits the door frame to my right and explodes.

  “We were wrong,” she whimpers. “We were wrong to not keep me tied up.”

  The simulacrum.

  I drop the wine and the goblets, running to her, prising the box from her hands. But still she reaches for them, and I shove the box into her outstretched fingers and keep the last two vials close to my chest as I back away, horrified.

  “You have to knock me out.” She stumbles towards me, glass crunching beneath her feet. “Please. Hit me, do something. I won’t stop. I can’t.”

  I keep backing away until I hear footsteps approaching from the outer doors.

  “Twylla?”

  “Ymilla, thank the Gods! Listen, I need you to—”

  “She’s here,” Ymilla says, and her voice is triumphant. “Down here.”

  Errin understands what’s going on before I do.

  “Run,” she tells me as she lurches towards me, trapping me in the corridor between her and Ymilla. “Push me aside and run.”

  When I glance back at Ymilla, Lief is standing beside her, dressed in black, a patch over his right eye, half a dozen men beside him.

  “You bastard,” Errin screams at him. “I trusted you. And you – you bitch, you treacherous, scheming bitch. You’ll pay for this.”

  “Yes, she will.” Lief turns and waves a hand at one of his men.

  Before Ymilla can turn, the man has planted a dagger in her chest.

  “Don’t bother feeling sorry for her,” Lief says. “She’s been reporting to King Aurek for weeks. She wrote to him and told him Merek was alive, and here with you. She offered to be his spy, if she could have her title and home back. Sadly for her, King Aurek has no use for the two-faced.”

  “And yet he trusts you.” I say.

  Lief’s expression darkens. “Very witty. Very clever. Pity you didn’t see through her.”

  “I’m a terrible judge of character,” I say.

  I look at the woman on the floor, her life pumping out of her, her mouth gasping like that of a fish.

  “Sorry.” I turn to Errin. Then I shove her aside and run. I hear footsteps behind me, multiple pairs, as I bolt back down the corridor, through the courtyard and towards the armoury.

  Inside I pull my sword down from its hook and spin around, in time to see Lief entering the room.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “Are you going to fight me?” he asks.

  In reply I pull the sword from its sheath and hold it out. “Twylla. . .” he says.

  I don’t wait for him to draw his sword.

  I swing at him and he twists aside, the blade missing him by less than an inch.

  “Twylla. . .” he tries again, but I bring my arm around on his blind side, slashing at his forearm. I don’t get through the leather gauntlet there, but I make contact, and it’s enough to cause him to pivot away and draw his own weapon.

  For a third time I swipe at him, and he deflects the blow easily, the flat of his sword smashing into mine and sending shock waves down the blade, jarring my forearm.

  I hear footsteps again, and then two of his men are in the doorway. They look between us and one of them smirks, firing my rage. I feel my lips curl back in fury.

  Lief glances briefly over his shoulder, and as he does I try once more.

  This time his sword crashes into mine with such force that I lose the blade; it flies from my hand and skids across the floor.

  In the second it takes me to begin moving towards my sword, my only hope, Lief has hold of my arm, pulling me around to face him. He prises the vials from where I still grip them in my left hand. He drops them to the floor, crushing them under his boot.

  “No,” I say, bending as if to scrape the remnants together.

  He pulls me upright. “It’s over, Twylla.”

  “Merek. . .” I whisper.

  “Will find more than he bargained for at the caves.”

  I look down at the shards there, everything we’d worked towards, gone. My people out there, walking into a trap. Then I look up, into his eye, and he looks back at me without flinching.

  “So we’ve both gone for a new look.” He waves his hand in front of his eyes. “You’re still beautiful, though. We can’t say the same about me any more.”

  “Go to hell,” I whisper.

  Behind him his men watch us closely.

  Lief leans in. “What makes you think we’re not already there?” he asks.

  He kisses my cheek lightly, the cord of his patch scratching my face as he pulls away.

  I raise my hand and slap him, hard; the crack rings through the room, and I hear his men suck in their breath.

  The last thing I see is his hand rising, followed by a sharp pain at my temple. Then nothing.

  Chapter 25

  When I wake I know exactly where I am. At first I think it’s six moons ago, and I’m here because Helewys caught me with Lief, and I’ve been dragged through the corridors in front of everyone. Then my head gives a painful throb and I remember. The dungeon smells the same: dank, musty, acrid like a foxhole. The air is still damp, and cold, the temperature largely the same as it was in summer. I expect the rushes I’m lying on are the same ones, too.

  I sit up and try to get my bearings, and as I move I hear a growl in the dark.

  “Oh, piss off,” I hiss at the beast.

  A low chuckle curls out of the shadows, and then I hear the sound of a flint being struck.

  In the sparks before the flame takes, I see flashes of white, and two gold discs gleaming like the eyes of an animal between the bars of the cell door. Then, as the candle lights up, the face of Aurek, the Sleeping Prince, is revealed.

  He has been sat, it seems, in front of the cell in the pitch black, waiting for me to wake, though I have no idea how long I’ve been unconscious for. Beside him is one of Helewys’s dogs, and he rests a long-fingered hand on top of the beast’s head.

  “Hello, Twylla,” he says, and his voice is as beautiful and alluring as I remembered. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  “You must be Aurek.”

  “I am.” He holds the candle up and looks at me. “You’ve been asleep for a very long time. I was concerned that Lief had hit you too hard. The temple area.” He raises a hand to his own head and taps the side, his silvery hair rippling under
the motion. “It’s tricky,” he continues. “You have to be careful.” He leans forward, peering at me, his head cocked like a bird’s. “I didn’t know your eyes were white. Lief never said. I like them. It’s like someone scooped out the eyeballs and replaced them with pearls.” He pauses, as though waiting for me to thank him for the compliment. When it becomes apparent that isn’t going to happen, he continues. “Perhaps that’s what I’ll do with your skull, once all your flesh has finally decayed away. Pearls in your eye sockets. Rubies spilling from your mouth.”

  I keep my face as still as stone.

  “I’m going to make a crown out of your ribs,” he continues. “A sceptre from your thigh bone.”

  “I’m not overly concerned with what you do with my skeleton. It’s not as though I’ll be using it, if I’m dead.”

  He laughs again, the sound merry and bubbling, and it echoes around the dungeon. “Everyone led me to believe you’d be a meek, quiet little thing.”

  “I was, once.”

  He looks at me, and I look right back, exploring him as his gaze roves over me. From behind the panel in the bone temple I could see so little, but now I see the resemblance to Silas, an uncanny one, in fact. If Silas grew his hair, or if Aurek cut his, they could pass for brothers. He’s handsome, as is Silas, but more polished, more arranged, somehow. Like Merek used to, he has that sheen of entitlement over him, like a gloss.

  “No, I don’t think Lief would like it,” he murmurs finally, and I meet his eyes once more.

  “What?”

  “If I took you to my bed.”

  “You’ll need me to be a corpse for that too, I’m afraid,” I say coldly.

  “I meant as my bride, fool,” he says. “You have power in your veins. As do I. I’d like to see what kind of children we’d make. My others were only ever aurumsmiths, you see. I can make gold, but I can also give life. With you, I wonder. . . I make life; your blood, if it’s like your ancestor’s, defeats the Elixir. So perhaps our children could raise the dead,” he muses, and I work to suppress a shiver. “We’d make little necromancers. We could conquer everything then. They’d have silver eyes. . .” He smiles “Imagine it.”

  I push down the horror of his words. “Is that why you’re here? To make me an offer of a truce? Marry me and this will all be over?”

  “Lief said once you were going to be queen. I can make you queen now. Queen for ever, with the Elixir. If we breed the philtresmith, we never need worry about running out.”

  I stare at him, unable to hide my disgust, and he seems genuinely surprised by it.

  “Is it truly so repellent to you? I’m offering you a chance to live.”

  “Oh, I’m utterly repelled. But.” I pause. “In other ways your words are very welcome.”

  He narrows those golden eyes at me. “How so?”

  “In my experience victors don’t offer bargains,” I say. “They don’t need to. Which tells me something didn’t go as you’d hoped.”

  His face is expressionless as a statue for a moment. “An odd thing to say, when you’re sat here in a cell.”

  “Who don’t you have in a cell? That’s what I’m wondering.”

  “I think I would have preferred the old Twylla better,” Aurek says. He rises to his feet in one swift motion. “Last chance. Join me?”

  “They got away, didn’t they?” I stretch my lips into a smile that has nothing to do with amusement. “The rest of the commune. They defeated your men.”

  “I’m going to have your heart potted, and eat it with caviar and quail’s eggs,” Aurek hisses through the bars, now demonic as his face scrunches up with rage. “I’m going to gorge on it.”

  I force myself to laugh, loudly, looking at him as I do. For a moment I think he’ll open the door and kill me now, but he turns, furious, the dog at his heels. He takes the candle with him, leaving me laughing in the dark.

  My next visitor comes later; I’m not sure how much time has passed. But I’ve been expecting him. When I see the light glowing on the wall I sit up, and watch as Lief approaches me.

  The dramatic irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. Here I am again in the dungeon; here is another man looking at me with disappointment in his eyes. Eye, in Lief’s case. Again I’m struck by how everything has come full circle, how all roads have led me back to Lormere castle, back to poison, back to betrayal.

  “Where’s Merek?” I ask, because with Lief I don’t need to pretend. With Lief I never have, and that’s the most heartbreaking thing of all.

  “We don’t know,” he says, because he doesn’t have to pretend with me either. Not any more. “He and the people he was with were ambushed, you knew that. Some fell. Most did not. But we will find them.”

  “Who fell?”

  “I couldn’t say.” His face darkens. “Merek got away. And the Sister.”

  “Nia and Kirin?”

  “I didn’t see their bodies.”

  “What of the children?”

  His face tightens. “I’m not one of your so-called Rising, Twylla. I don’t report to you.”

  “No. You report to the Sleeping Prince.”

  “Yes.” He nods. “I do.”

  “So they won, then? The Rising Dawn? They liberated them? You might as well tell me; your king insinuated as much. He offered me the chance to join him. Be his bride. Bear his children. That would make me your queen, would it not?”

  No expression crosses Lief’s face.

  “I think he hoped I would say yes, bring the Rising to heel. They must have caused quite an uproar.”

  “There is no Rising any more. It’s over. Those who escaped will be found. And even if a tiny fraction of outliers thought to imitate your rebels, it will make no difference in the long term, Twylla. Once you’re dead, and once Merek is really dead, there will be nothing to rally around. It’ll be over.”

  I hang my head in a show of denial, because I don’t want him to see that I hear what he’s not saying, at the words between his threats. The rebellion has happened anyway. Somehow, one of the towns, maybe all, have risen up. That’s what he means by “rally around”. The Rising rose. Perhaps is still Rising.

  “Will you at least tell me where Errin is?” I will my voice to sound strained.

  It works, because he replies. “Confined to a cell. Nowhere near here. She’s awaiting trial too, but His Grace has already promised her leniency, as a favour to me for bringing you to him.”

  “She’ll never forgive you.”

  “She never would have anyway. But she’s my little sister. I care more about her living than her forgiveness.”

  “Why are you here?” I look up at him again.

  “I brought you your supper. And a gown to wear tomorrow. Unless you want everyone’s last image of you to be as you are now.” He puts the candle down, far enough away that I can’t reach through the bars for it, and walks to a pile on the floor. He returns, pushing a pile of red cloth through the bars, followed by a tin carafe of water, and a sack, which I assume contains food. I look at the pile of things, then back at him.

  “Tomorrow?”

  He nods. I suppose it makes sense. Killing me will strike a blow to the rebels. The longer I’m alive, the longer they can hope. . .

  “I’m your executioner,” he says.

  I’m not sure I’ve heard him properly.

  “I’m the best option,” he says when I continue to stare at him. “I’ll be fast, at least.”

  “You’re going to kill me?”

  “I’m going to execute you,” he corrects.

  “Is there a difference?”

  His lips twist as he almost smiles. “No. You know there isn’t. You remember.”

  I don’t remind him that I never actually executed anyone. For the first time since I woke up down here, fear starts to trickle through me. I look at him, his scarred face, the patch over his eye. His hair, shorter now. I barely recognize him.

  “How will you do it?”

  “Sword.”

&nb
sp; I nod, as though that’s acceptable to me, when inside I’m shaking.

  “What would happen if I told Aurek you spared me in the bone temple?” I ask. “What would he do?”

  “I expect he’d be angry at first. But given that you’re here now, the result is the same. Nothing will change that. And the delay has meant we now have the added bonus of identifying a great many troublemakers who might have gone unchecked, had you been captured then. Things have ended well for us.”

  “You’re the kind of person who always lands on your feet, Lief.”

  He slams his fist against the bars. “Do I?”

  I don’t know why, of all the things I’ve said to him tonight, that sentence is the one that makes him angry, but it does, and I’m taken aback, because until now he’s been calm and controlled. Emotionless, even. But this is the Lief who screamed at me on the stairs of my tower and kissed me, who begged me to forgive him. This Lief’s eye blazes like the aurora.

  I take a deep breath. “It looks that way to me.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that this is all your fault?” His voice is low, guttural, the words coming fast. “That if you’d just. . .” He turns to look over his shoulder, and when he next speaks his voice is barely above a whisper. “I wouldn’t have met him had I been with you. None of this might have happened this way if you’d listened to me. This is your own doing.”

  “And had you not conspired to ruin me, we might have been living in Tremayne now, with your mother and Errin,” I say. “You did this. To all of us.”

  His face falls, loss carved across it for the briefest moment. Then he turns and walks away, no final retort, no last word. He leaves the candle, though I doubt he meant to. And then I’m alone again. With no hope of getting out of this mess.

  The dress Lief brought is the one I was wearing the day he first kissed me, and I know he did it deliberately, one last slap to the face. I imagine him searching through the wardrobe until he found it, choosing it with this in mind. I wonder if Aurek told him he’d be the one to kill me, or whether he asked for the opportunity. I crush the dress in my hands.

  I consider not wearing it to spite him, but he’s right, I don’t want the last image the Lormerians have of me to be in a torn, filthy tunic and old breeches. Perhaps I can still do some good, still be a symbol to them. So I put on the dress, surprised to find it’s tight on my arms and shoulders, where I’ve built muscle learning to fight. I comb my fingers through my hair, and use some of the water and my old undershirt to clean my face as much as I can. I shiver as the water runs down beneath the bodice; the dress is too thin for the weather, designed for days under the sun, and he didn’t bring me a cloak. Still, it’s not as though I’m at risk of dying of a chill, is it?