by Caitlin Seal
There was something about the look he gave her that was almost pleading. And when she drew in aether, she sensed the barest hint of uncertainty. Maybe deep down he really did regret killing her. Now he was asking her to tell him it was all right, that she understood why he’d done it. Naya sat a little straighter in her chair. “I. Will. Never. Forgive. You.” As she spoke the words, she imagined each one like a dagger thrown at his chest.
Valn leaned back, then turned away. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I would still beg you to think of the bigger picture. I assume you know what has to happen next?”
Naya clenched her jaw. “Let me guess: you’re going to kill me. Again.”
“The executions will be tomorrow,” Valn said, as though they were talking about the weather. “Again, I’m sorry. I had hoped we could continue working together. I’m sure you’re trying to come up with ways to fight me, but I’d like to propose an alternative. If you cooperate, and refrain from any undignified and futile displays of protest, then I will do everything in my power to help this city’s undead during the transition. I won’t be able to save all of them, and of course there will have to be strict bans on any further resurrections, but I think I can make the queen see the value in sparing those who submit.”
For a moment Naya was too shocked to answer. Her throat tightened. “Why would you help the undead?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Everything I’ve done here has been to minimize the damage of the coming conflict. But if you continue inciting violence among the undead, you’ll only make it harder for me to justify sparing them once our troops take the city.”
Naya drew in a deep breath of aether. The energy felt thick and heavy with determination, mixed with that same sour threads of regret. Valn’s expression gave no hint of whether he was lying. He was a murderer who got others to do the dirty work for him. But he also didn’t share her father’s rage. If he thought granting mercy to the undead would make it easier to build his puppet government and dominate Ceramor, he might actually do it. Her thoughts turned to Corten, to Jesla. “You really expect I’ll trade a handful of lives for all those deaths your war will cause?”
“I expect you’ll refrain from a futile show of resistance to save those you can. War is coming. Nothing you do or say will stop that.”
Naya’s hands shook. He was wrong. There had to be something they could still do. But even as she thought it, her shoulders sagged. The cold from the salma wood cuffs had spread past her elbows. She was trapped, and everything she’d tried so far had only made things worse.
“I’ll give you time to consider your options.” Valn motioned for the guards to follow him. “Bring her, if you would.”
The guards detached Naya’s shackles from the chair and used the chain to drag her to her feet. They led her down a hall lined with heavy doors. The whole place stank of old sweat, rotting straw, and other, worse things besides. The oily reek of despair in the aether infected her, mixing with her own emotions and making her sag against her shackles. The guards hauled her to a stop in front of a door with no window.
“Celia told me you had little trouble forcing your way through the salma wood plate inside our old friend’s door, but I know you can’t break through this.” Valn withdrew a large key from a chain around his neck and used it to unlock the door. “I’m going to have one of my men remove those cuffs. Every guard in this dungeon is equipped to deal with wraiths. Even if you were to fight your way out of this cell, you would not make it out of the palace. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
One of the guards unlocked her shackles. Naya barely had time to register the relief of warmth seeping back into her arms before she was shoved into the cell. She stumbled forward and collided with the far wall. Behind her the door slammed shut, plunging the cell into darkness. Naya jerked her hands away from the wall. It nipped at her skin with the frostbite chill of more salma wood. She tried to press through it, but the chill only intensified.
“Who’s there?” someone asked from just to her right. The voice was ragged, but Naya recognized it all the same.
“Lucia?” She spun toward the sound.
“Blue? I thought that was you. What are you doing here?”
Naya blinked, then squinted, but the dark was absolute. She raised one hand and felt it brush a sleeve, felt the arm under that sleeve wince away. “I, um, came to rescue you.”
Lucia seemed to consider this new information for a moment. “Ah…I don’t suppose this was part of that plan?”
“No.” Naya fumbled forward until she reached what she thought was the door. She pressed her hands against it. The smooth wood was as icy and unyielding as the walls. “Is this whole place made of salma wood?” she asked, marveling at what that must have cost.
“I believe so,” Lucia said.
“Why would they put you here? You’re not a wraith.”
“I wondered that myself.” She coughed. “There are only a handful of cells like this in the whole kingdom. I suspect Valn wanted to protect against the chance that the Council would decide to send a team of wraiths to rescue me. Unlikely, of course. As for you, well, there’s nowhere else they could safely put you. I suppose it was simpler to leave me in here than to move me.”
Naya sat on the floor. It, at least, didn’t have the same unyielding chill. But when she let her hand sink down experimentally, she ran into another barrier of salma wood.
Lucia cleared her throat. “Do you know what’s going on outside?”
“War,” Naya said. She drew in a breath of aether and let the despair sink in.
Bit by bit, in response to Lucia’s prodding questions, Naya revealed what had happened since they’d separated.
“Alejandra,” Lucia said, her voice going rough around the name. “Were you able to see what happened to her? Is she still alive?”
Naya closed her eyes, replaying the chaos of the brief fight. “Last time I saw her, one of the guards had her pinned to the wall. She was struggling, so I think she’s still alive at least.”
“Then they’ll have her down here somewhere.”
“I’m sorry,” Naya said.
“I doubt there’s anything you could have done to stop her from coming. Alejandra’s always had a habit of rushing into things.”
Lucia’s voice held a note of tender sadness that sent heat rushing to Naya’s cheeks. “I didn’t realize. Do you love her?”
Lucia remained silent a moment, then sighed. “Yes. I suppose it’s not so damning as being an undead Talmiran, but it’s still not the sort of thing we like to proclaim.”
“Why?” Naya asked.
Lucia made a snorting sound. “Because most people here still see relationships like ours as selfish. After the war, one of King Allence’s advisers began a campaign to ‘rebuild the population.’ The treaty stripped our weapons, but I think he had some vague hope that if we just had enough babies, we could eventually protect ourselves by numbers alone. It was stupid of course, but it gave an excuse for others to scorn people like Alejandra and me. Never mind that we both had far better things to do with our time than make babies.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “In Talmir no one would have minded. Not so long as you married,” Naya said.
“Oh, of course. Well, it was such a comfort to know Valn didn’t scorn my private life while he forced me into treason and threatened the woman I love.”
“I’m sorry,” Naya said again. “I should have realized sooner what was going on. I should have figured out a better way to stop him.”
Lucia sighed. “And I should have taken Alejandra and run rather than letting him threaten me into resurrecting you. Yet here we are.”
Silence fell, and it felt heavier for the darkness around them. “Why didn’t you run?” Naya asked.
Cloth rustled against wood as Lucia shifted. “Does it matter?”
“It does to
me. Corten talked about you like you were this pillar of morality. I don’t think he’d have believed you would use the old war runes if he hadn’t seen the evidence himself.”
“That boy,” Lucia said softly, “is too trusting for his own good.”
“I know.” Naya hugged her knees tighter.
“Well,” Lucia said after a long moment. “I suppose if we’re both going to die tomorrow, there’s no harm in one more person knowing the truth.” She paused, as though considering her next words carefully. “The short answer is that Valn knew who I was during the war. Even if we’d run, he could have caused all sorts of trouble by exposing my identity.”
“Who were you?” Naya asked.
“Isabela Cerones, apprentice to Renor Marotin. Valn came to me because I’m probably the only person still alive who’d ever resurrected a reaper.”
Naya drew in a sharp breath and heard Lucia chuckle in response. The laugh transformed into a cough. “I suppose you think I’m lying, given the show the Talmiran Army made of purging everyone involved in the research.”
“I…Corten told me there were rumors that some people escaped the first search, but I thought they were all caught.”
“That’s mostly true. I was an apprentice when the Mad King’s war began. My master and I were drafted to design the reapers. But we finished our work too late to make any real difference. My master was sent to the front lines to perform resurrections, while I remained at our research center on the border. After the Battle of Nel Hill, only a handful of us made it out before the Talmirans broke through into Ceramor. The others were caught by patrols in a matter of days, though I didn’t know it at the time.
“I ran south as fast as I could, sleeping in ditches and stealing food whenever I had the chance. Eventually I made it down to Rolsina, by the Silmaran border. By then the city was already thick with refugees who’d fled the fighting in the north. The Talmirans still searched there of course, but I managed to avoid them.”
Naya sat in stunned silence. “If the Talmirans knew you escaped, then why would you ever start practicing necromancy again? Wouldn’t that just draw attention?”
“Current circumstances do point to that conclusion,” Lucia said drily. “But at the time it felt like the only option. I lived on the streets in Rolsina for almost a year, begging to keep myself alive, stealing when that wasn’t enough. I probably would have gone on like that until something killed me. But one day I overheard someone say my name. At first I thought that was the end. I was too exhausted to keep running. Yet the man was telling his companion I’d been found and executed. I could hardly believe it. But I found the announcement in the newspaper the next day.”
Lucia paused, then let out a tired sigh. “I still don’t know if the Talmirans believed that whatever poor soul they caught really was me, or if they just needed to execute someone so as not to look like they’d failed. Either way, someone else died and I was given a second chance. I decided I had to use it to help people, and necromancy was the only thing I knew. I changed my name and found someone to forge the documents I needed to make my identity official. Once that was done, I joined a group of refugees traveling back north to Belavine. I’d heard rumors that the necromancers here were working to preserve what they could of our art. It was a risk, but I wanted to do whatever I could to help. Everything was going well until…” She trailed off.
“Until Valn found you,” Naya said.
“Yes. I still have no idea how he figured it out. So many years had passed that I thought I was finally safe. But when he came to my door, he knew my real name. He had one of my old research notebooks. It seemed impossible. I hadn’t taken anything with me when I fled, and I assumed everything else had been destroyed. But apparently that wasn’t the case.”
Naya tried to absorb what Lucia was saying. “Where would Valn have gotten your notes?”
“I don’t know. He seems a bit young to have taken part in the purges, though it isn’t impossible. Creator knows, I wasn’t much older than you are now when that all began.”
Naya scowled. “Why hide the runes all this time? And why wait until now to use them?”
“Perhaps it took him this long to make his plans. Or perhaps there’s some other factor at play. It doesn’t seem to matter much now. I doubt you or I will live long enough to learn the truth.”
Naya squeezed her knees tighter against her chest. “I won’t let him kill me again.”
Lucia didn’t answer. Naya closed her eyes, even though it made little difference in the dark. She hated waiting and not knowing what was going on. The attack on Valn had failed, but what had happened to everyone from the Council? What had happened to Corten? Hopefully he’d been able to escape. But even if he was free, she doubted he’d be able to stay that way for long if the Talmiran Army managed to take the city. A heavy weight settled in her stomach. If she gave Valn what he wanted, maybe he could protect Corten.
“You said Jalance repaired your bond,” Lucia said, startling Naya from her thoughts.
“He tried. It made things a little better, but he said there was something wrong, something about the old bone draining energy from the new.”
“Interesting. Are your original bones still causing you pain?”
Naya flexed her fingers. “Not anymore, and I feel sharper than I did before.”
“Hmm,” Lucia said, satisfaction buzzing through the word. “Then it must have worked.”
“What worked?”
“Your bones are healing.”
Naya stared in the direction of Lucia’s voice, her eyes straining to pick out some sign of the necromancer’s expression. “I thought that was impossible. Corten said a wraith’s bones can’t heal.”
“It was impossible, or at least that’s what everyone thought. One of the biggest challenges we faced when designing the reapers was that the new abilities put too much stress on the bones. The fractures were tiny, but they accumulated quickly. The few reapers we successfully resurrected had to have new bones carved after nearly every battle, which was hardly ideal. We’d tried all sorts of solutions—reinforcing the runes, adding duplicates to reduce strain—but the cracks kept forming. I thought that if we couldn’t prevent them, then maybe we could find a way to repair them without continually carving new bones. I’ve been playing with the theory since before the war’s end, but your bond was the first chance I had to really test it. From what you’ve described it sounds like the crack you suffered was severe. The new bone Jalance carved must have taken some of the strain off the cracked area. If the pain’s gone, then it’s possible the bone is already healed.”
“So you did experiment on me,” Naya said. It seemed stupid to be angry about it now, but she couldn’t stop the emotion from leaking into her voice.
Lucia coughed. “Yes, well, if Valn was going to force me to break the treaty and possibly destroy my own life in the process, I wanted to at least learn something from it.”
The answer was so absurd it startled a laugh up from Naya’s chest. “Some good it does if the secret dies with us.”
“You said Jalance has my notes.”
“He does, but I’m not sure he actually understood them. After he added the new bone, he said the repairs could cause my bond to snap. For all I know I could explode before Valn gets the chance to kill me.”
“Explode?” Lucia snorted. “That’s—oh. Oh!”
“What?”
Cloth rustled as Lucia shifted closer. “Come here. I have an idea.”
The walls of the cell muffled sound as well as aether. So there was no warning before the door finally opened, dazzling Naya with a sudden flood of lantern light. “Cuff them both,” Valn said from somewhere behind the light. Naya’s instincts screamed at her to run. Instead she held her hands forward and let the guards clamp the wooden cuffs over her wrists.
One of the guards locked a more mundane set of iron cuffs
around Lucia’s shaking wrists. A greenish bruise marred one of her cheeks, and the lines around her eyes seemed far deeper than Naya remembered. Lucia met Naya’s eyes and dipped her chin in a slight nod.
Naya looked away, not daring to let any sign of hope show on her features. Lucia’s plan was more than a little mad, and more likely to get them killed than provide a means of escape. But it at least meant they’d die fighting, instead of going passively to their execution.
Naya’s eyes stung when she thought of Corten. Was she throwing away her best chance to help him survive the coming conflict? But that help was such an uncertain thing. Besides, Corten and the rest deserved better than the future Valn offered. She had to believe they would find a way to keep fighting.
The guards dragged them down a different hall from the one Naya remembered, through a series of twists and turns, and eventually up a narrow stair. They came out into another hall, this one furnished with rich carpeting and paintings on the walls. Valn paused. “I trust you’ve considered what we discussed?” he asked Naya.
Naya ignored Lucia’s curious glance. She let her shoulders slump. “Yes.”
“Good.” Valn patted her shoulder the way someone might pat a favorite dog. “I don’t expect you to understand, but I am sorry. I wish this could have ended differently for you.”
Naya’s skin crawled, but she bit her lip and nodded. With her hair falling over her eyes, at least she didn’t have to see his face. The guards gave her shackles a jerk and led her outside. Naya hunched, looking as pathetic as possible. They were somewhere near the back of the palace, outside what looked to be a servant’s entrance. Evening light glowed against the high stone walls. Two black carriages waited just a few steps from the doors, surrounded by guards.
