The Gods of Vice (The Vengeance Trilogy Book 2)

by Devin Madson

‘In childbirth.’

  ‘With Darius?’

  ‘No, he was easy born. Lady Laroth always said he wanted to come into the world. His sister was not so keen.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘How?’

  The questions came fast, rapid words born from the knowledge I was running out of time. One hundred and fifty-one souls were almost upon us.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions,’ Avarice said.

  Forcing myself not to look into the trees, I replied: ‘I have a lot of ignorance.’

  ‘Knowledge won’t fix that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Avarice shrugged one large shoulder and spoke like a man reciting from a page. ‘“Knowledge is nothing but the absence of comprehension”.’

  ‘Did Master Darius say that?’

  An arrow pierced the golden aura of our lanterns and buried itself, juddering, in the side of the wagon. Shouts cut through the night. A horse squealed. Ahead, Apostasy reached for his sickle, controlling his skittering horse with a single hand on the reins. The weapon came free from his belt, the narrow hooks along its outer edge crying out for flesh. Perhaps he saw the arrow coming, saw the flicker of red fletching, looking up in time for the arrowhead to pierce his eye. It threw him from the saddle, his skull hitting the road with a sickening crack.

  Abandoning their horses, the Vices charged into the trees amid the rain of arrows.

  Hope scrabbled at the door. ‘Master!’ he cried, trying to grip the latch in a shaking hand. ‘We’re under attack!’

  Pain chipped at my body, the sting of cuts, of torn flesh and gaping throats gasping air.

  An arrow clipped a wheeler’s nose and the horse backed with a squeal, almost tipping the wagon off the track. The others panicked, but Avarice held them as an arrow came for his neck. A wave of pain ebbed into the night and the projectile glanced off him, his skin greying and mottled like blood-soaked stone.

  Avarice didn’t flinch.

  ‘Master!’

  Shadowy figures moved between the trees. A man stepped into the light, dodging the swing of a sickle, but the sharp hooks ripped his flesh. Blood spattered the Vice’s face and the man howled.

  Bodies covered the road. One fell screaming from above, hitting the ground with a crack of bone, neck twisted. Pale ooze leaked from his head. In his hand a broken bow, and around his waist a black sash.

  Katashi’s men.

  ‘How many are there?’ Malice was beside me, curls of smoke caught to his hair. ‘Don’t just stare at me,’ he snarled. ‘My men are dying. How many are there?’

  ‘One hundred and eleven still alive.’ I gasped. A scream ended in a gurgle as flesh tore, a Vice’s sickle swinging true. ‘One hundred and ten.’

  Perched on the running board, Hope nocked an arrow to his bow as more Pikes rushed from the trees. Let loose, the arrow found its mark, slamming into the chest of an oncoming solider.

  Malice gripped the front of my robe, pulling me so close I could taste the opium on his breath. ‘Kill them,’ he hissed.

  The urge to obey was overpowering. His words moved my hands, my body tensing as the Empathy rose, seeking fuel. I gripped Malice’s arm. It was easy to push through his barriers, to hear the fearful whisper of his thoughts, but it was not enough. The drug had dulled his hatred, dulled his anger.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said. ‘You’re not strong enough.’

  Malice stared at me, no words, no orders left upon his tongue. But the urge was still there, to do as he had commanded before the shadowy hand around my heart began to squeeze, crushing breath from this sack of flesh that was my body.

  Pikes swarmed the road. A curved blade swung inches from Hope’s thigh, throwing him off balance. He hit the running board, bow skidding away onto the road.

  The Pikes kept coming.

  Frightened horses trampled bodies into the dirt.

  A man launched himself at the box and a blade slid into Avarice’s arm, through muscle and sinew. He hissed and his skin mottled, hardening into stone around the metal. The Pike yanked on the hilt but it would not budge and he fell back, slamming into the running board. Hope was there, gripping the Pike’s face between his hands. Caught, he stared up into Hope’s boyish face and his eyes widened. Horror. Desolation. It sucked flesh from his bones and hollowed his cheeks.

  The man jerked out of the Vice’s hold, tears streaming down his cheeks, and with great wracking sobs he cried as though his heart was breaking. Heedless of the dead, he fell to his knees, yanked his knife from his sash and thrust it into his own gut.

  Hope retched.

  ‘Kill them,’ Malice ordered, his eyes lit with hunger. ‘All of them. Now.’

  I couldn’t pull my eyes from the solider. He knelt, skewered on his own blade, a faint smile tracing bloodied lips.

  ‘That is an order, Endymion, yes?’

  I stared at him. ‘What about your Vices?’

  ‘They have thick skins. Do it.’

  The need to obey was too strong. I could not fight it, could not fight the pain that pooled in my chest every moment I delayed. Two steps to Hope’s side and all it took was a touch. I pressed my hand to his cheek, the same caress with which he had destroyed everything that man had lived for.

  One hundred and four enemies and I could reach them all with the despair that filled Hope’s soul. I let out a slow breath and spread his soul, turning the air to poison.

  A harmony of pain rent the air. Pikes fell, tearing at their hair, keening, crying, every moan shredding their souls. The Vices pressed hands to their ears, but the hopelessness seeped through skin, every pore breathing the despair deep.

  A man leapt from the canopy and hit the edge of the wagon roof. As he fell his foot caught in the wheel, his leg twisting as his face slammed into the ground.

  I stared at the carnage, unable to take my hand from Hope’s cheek, unable to break the connection. The Pikes had turned their weapons on themselves and now lay dead or dying, but General Tan stood in the middle of the road, rooted by dead flesh. Beside him a man smiled up at the shifting canopy, the bloodied tip of a blade stuck through his throat. Twisted arms and buckled legs, a mess of flesh around his feet. But General Tan did not look down, did not see it. He looked skyward, the tip of his knife against his neck. And with a hand flat on the hilt, he pressed the blade slowly into his own throat.

  Hope pulled away and leant over the edge of the wagon, vomit hitting the track with a wet splatter. It stuck in his hair and he trembled, gilded tears running fast.

  Not all the Pikes were dead. Some were bleeding out slowly from wounds in arms and legs and guts, but there were no cries of pain, no howls of grief. They lay still, barely twitching, the night full of gentle, warm satisfaction.

  Having removed the blade from his arm, Avarice leapt into the road, not seeming to care that he walked on faces and blood-soaked hair. The surviving Vices were trying to calm their horses, each stallion’s glossy coat as blood-splattered and filthy as their own midnight cloaks. But the touch of Avarice’s large hands soothed each one in turn, their ears pricking at the sound of his voice.

  A touch on my shoulder made me flinch. Malice was watching me. ‘Well done, Endymion,’ he said. ‘You are quite remarkable, yes?’

  I barely heard his words, my gaze drawn back to the lifeless face of General Tan. He stared toward the heavens with sightless eyes, the shifting canopy between him and the gods.

  One hundred and fifty-nine dead men; horses spilling their guts onto the track. Down the hillside two frightened souls huddled in a woodcutter’s cabin. Eighty-seven souls in the village we had passed. And from its vast distances, Kisia spoke to me.

  That’s wrong. That shouldn’t be possible.

  Shivatsa, this
hurts.

  The screaming has stopped. Should we go see what happened? What if someone needed help and we just hid here and did nothing?

  The gods will judge.

  They will judge.

  They will.

  They must.

  Chapter 6

  I woke with the ghost of Katashi lying beside me. His smell lingered – the slightly sweet fragrance of clean skin – and when I tensed, my flesh felt bruised. Dust danced above me in the morning light. The castle was quiet, only servants moving through the halls.

  I pushed aside the covers. Owning the acute hearing of a serving maid, Tili slid the door from her own tiny room and came in. She had her long hair caught back in its customary bun and she smiled, but there were dark rings beneath her eyes.

  ‘Good morning, my lady,’ she said. ‘I hope you were not woken last night.’

  ‘Should I have been?’

  She set back the lid of my travelling chest and removed a dressing robe, a single layer of thin tan silk, close around the throat. ‘I hoped not, but His Majesty insisted on looking in on you, just in case Lord Laroth should have been here.’

  ‘Lord Laroth? Do you mean Katashi came back last night?’

  ‘I refused to let any of the guards enter, my lady,’ she said, shaking out the dressing robe with a snap. ‘I could not, however, stop His Majesty from doing whatever he wished. He looked in not long before sunrise, my lady.’

  ‘Looking for Darius?’

  ‘Lord Laroth was to be executed this morning.’

  ‘Oh gods, he can’t have meant to go through with it? Why didn’t you wake me?’

  Tili, having helped me into the robe, ushered me toward the mirror. ‘Don’t worry yourself, my lady. He escaped.’

  The words took a moment to sink in. ‘How?’

  Pausing in the act of cleaning old hairs from my comb, Tili said: ‘Everyone is saying he walked through the wall, my lady.’

  ‘Walked through the wall?’

  ‘That is what they say. They say he’s a demon in a man’s skin.’

  She began combing my hair. Not for a moment did I believe Darius had walked through the wall, but that he had managed an unlikely escape was obvious. Katashi would be furious, whatever his intentions had been, and almost I reconsidered going in search of him.

  When Tili had finished with my hair, I washed my face and began to dress, leaving her to choose the robe she considered most auspicious. She did so every day, noting things like the date and the weather, and mouthing numbers in strange sums until a final number remained.

  ‘Sixteen,’ she said, flitting to the chest. ‘A day for a great journey, my lady. Green?’ She pulled out a green and silver robe, dense with embroidered foliage, and a pale grey under robe.

  ‘Is that summer weight?’ I asked, pinching the fabric between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Of course, my lady. Otherwise you would sweat buckets.’

  She helped me into it. ‘Oh, this would look lovely with the gift General Manshin sent this morning,’ she said as I slid my arm into the wide sleeve. ‘Have you seen it, my lady?’

  ‘No, what gift?’

  Tili’s reflection walked out the side of the mirror, and she returned a moment later with a thin lacquered case. Sitting on a bed of velvet was an emerald and gold hair comb. It had been fashioned into the shape of a fan, and but for the gaudy array of stones might have been pretty. ‘What hair does he expect me to wear it in?’ I said, lifting it from the box. ‘It isn’t like I have enough for such a thing.’

  Tili chuckled. ‘Perhaps the general is not particularly observant.’

  ‘Oh, he’s observant, just not of my hair.’

  Gold strings hung from the comb, long enough that from my hair they would caress the bare nape of my neck. Tili stopped laughing. ‘My lady, it’s–’

  ‘I know, a wedding comb. A mistake? Or–’

  Our eyes met in the mirror and my cheeks reddened. How long had she stayed with me after Katashi left?

  ‘Do you know where His Majesty is to be found this morning?’ I asked, as Tili adjusted the knot of my sash.

  ‘I could not say, my lady,’ she said, lowering her gaze to her hands.

  I could not find the words to explain, and looked away. ‘Pack that comb away,’ I said. ‘Have it returned to the general with my compliments. Tell him there must have been some mistake.’

  ‘Yes, my lady. Is there anything else I can do for you, my lady?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  I walked toward the door and she was there before me, bowing as I exited into the dim passage.

  The castle was quiet, owning none of its usual buzz. There were no sauntering nobles, no trains of court sycophants, and the few guards I saw paid me no heed, too intent upon their whispered conversations to do more than glance my way. It felt like I had wandered into a temple. My sandals hit the wooden floor, loud like cracking nuts.

  I found the throne room empty. The council chamber, too. That meant Katashi was either out in the archery yard or in his apartments. I had hoped to avoid seeking him out in his rooms, but seeing nothing from the gallery windows, I was left with no choice. The servants would stare and the guards would whisper, the deep ache in my body a constant reminder of what I had invited.

  I made my way slowly up the stairs, thinking over my mission. Outside the Imperial Apartments Katashi’s guards watched me approach.

  ‘I wish to see Emperor Katashi.’

  Neither man bowed. ‘He has ordered no interruptions.’

  ‘Please let him know I wish to speak to him. It’s urgent.’

  There was a pause and they glanced at one another. One grinned. ‘As you wish, my lady.’

  Sliding the door as little as possible the man disappeared, leaving the other to stare over my shoulder. He said nothing but the grin did not leave his face until his companion returned. ‘His Majesty asks that you step inside, my lady,’ he said, an undisguised leer twisting his lips. ‘He is alone.’

  I swallowed the impulse to explain my errand and strode to the door, halting at the familiar smell. Wax. Katashi was sitting out of the bright sunlight, Hatsukoi laid across his lap. She was unstrung, her limbs curving the opposite way, curled like the legs of an enormous insect. I had only ever seen her like that once before, and then, like now, I had looked away, to stare as indecent as watching someone dress.

  Katashi seemed not to hear me, and unsure, I took a few more steps into the room. In simple black linen he was the Katashi of last night, the touch of his body imprinted on my skin.

  ‘Come to tell me where your guardian is?’ he asked, not looking up.

  ‘If you are referring to Darius, I don’t know where he is. I heard he escaped.’

  ‘You did, did you?’

  ‘Yes, my maid told me just now.’ I watched Katashi’s hands continue to caress Hatsukoi’s elegant form. ‘Why are you so angry? You weren’t going to execute him.’

  Katashi did not answer, just gently lowered Hatsukoi onto a sheet of white silk stretched across the matting.

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Of course I was,’ he snapped, rising to his feet. ‘Your precious Darius is dangerous, almost as dangerous as that spider and his Vices.’ He stalked toward me. ‘If he had taken the Oath I might have let him live.' He looked over my shoulder. 'You are dismissed.’

  I turned in time to see the guard bow himself out, closing the door behind him. Conversations with Kin had always taken place under the watchful eye of stone-faced guards, forty-seven assassination attempts having left him as afraid of being alone as he was of company. Only when he asked me to marry him had we been entirely alone, no one else to know that there had ever been more between us than a prisoner and her keeper.

  ‘You lied to me,
’ I said when the man had gone.

  ‘Hana–’

  ‘You told me he wouldn’t die.’

  ‘And that was no lie, Hana,’ he said. ‘If there had been no other way out, your precious Darius would have swallowed his pride and taken the Oath.’

  ‘And if he had not?’

  Katashi’s jaw snapped closed and he stared at me for a long moment. ‘Then he would have died,’ he said eventually. ‘Because an emperor cannot go back on his word.’

  ‘Shivatsa he cannot!’

  ‘Hana–’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Don’t think I will forgive you for it. You should be thankful he escaped.’

  ‘Thankful? Thankful that he has made a laughing stock of me? You have odd notions of what deserves my gratitude, cousin.’

  ‘Do I?’ I said. ‘Well, how about me? Do I deserve your gratitude?’

  He eyed me warily. ‘What do you want, Hana?’

  ‘A position,’ I said. ‘I want a proper place on the Council.’

  Katashi laughed. ‘A woman on the Council? Is that all?’

  ‘No. I want a command and I want an estate along with its title.’

  ‘And which estate do you have in mind?’

  ‘The Duchy of Katose would do well enough.’

  ‘You want my father’s title?’

  ‘I don’t see the problem. You’ve taken my father’s.’

  He turned away and strode to the window, staring out upon the bright gardens. Out there the boiling heat of summer was unrelenting, sucking the empire dry and shortening tempers. ‘You don’t trust me?’ he said, running a hand through his messy hair.

  ‘Have you given me reason to?’

  ‘Hana...’

  There was something like his old impatience in his face and for an instant I felt like Regent again – not enough a man for his companionship, not enough a woman for his love.

  ‘Why are you asking for this?’

  ‘Because I want to do something,’ I said. ‘I want to fight for my people. I don’t want to sit around being Lady Hana while people bow and whisper and refuse to talk to me.’