“Ji-hyeon Bong, I shall extend you a courtesy you refuse me—the truth.” And just like that, Empress Ryuki’s other neat white hand went to the other side of the neat white parchment and ripped it in half. “I honor no treaties with traitors.”
At that instant, Ji-hyeon knew she was a dead woman. She didn’t scramble to her feet, didn’t shout her protests, but she did turn to look at her second father—and saw he had not even had the forbearance of his wild daughter, hopping to his feet with a look of concentrated rage and hatred contorting his usually pleasant face.
“What is the meaning of this deception?” he bellowed, and as if in answer each of the dozen guards that knelt on each of the dozen steps calmly took up their white bows and nocked their single white arrows.
“You will quiet yourself, Kang-ho Bong,” spoke the empress, “or you will not even be granted the final mercy I offer your daughter. If either of you speak another word you will be executed immediately.”
Ji-hyeon couldn’t believe this was really happening. She could not fucking believe it. An upbringing in the Immaculate Isles had taught her that no single person in the entire Star was as noble, benevolent, and honest as the empress, and that ingrained idiocy had just led to her absolute downfall. This time yesterday she had sat and smiled across the table at Colonel Waits as they signed a truce that Ji-hyeon soon discovered the woman had every intention of betraying, and yet when the empress offered her even better terms that very evening she had joyously put her stamp to them. That even her innately duplicitous second father had not suspected a trap demonstrated how insidious this cultural belief in the empress’s trustworthiness truly was, but that didn’t do either of them an ounce of good, now that they had led the entire Cobalt Company into an ambush.
And yet like everything at Othean, even the ambushes were refined and quiet, Kang-ho looking as though he might burst a blood vessel in his bulging eyes but as silent as his dumbstruck daughter.
“That is much better,” said the empress, evidently enjoying the sound of her own voice as much as she abhorred anyone else’s. “Each moment you stand here drawing breath Othean is further sullied by your vile presence, and so I shall not prolong this ugliness. The truth I promised you is this: Jex Toth has indeed returned, but her shores remain quiet. Our armada has formed a blockade along the Haunted Sea while I consider different petitions to explore the interior, but my ships have spied no monsters nor devils, only once-violent seas grown calm.”
Ji-hyeon let out a sob of relief, then slapped a hand over her mouth, waiting for the arrows… but this was apparently not outrageous enough to provoke their bows. Hwabun had not been overrun. Her other dad was alive, her sisters, the staff, everyone was safe, the empress had just told her a tale of monsters to draw her out, and—
“Hwabun has been sacrificed to atone for your madness and cruelty,” Empress Ryuki announced. “You removed my son from this world, and so I have repaid the debt one hundred fold. Every member of your family and every servant on your Isle has been cast into the Temple of Pentacles, so that no trace of your tainted line remains in the world of mortals.”
Empress Ryuki was still speaking with that nasty, smug expression to her tone, but for the moment all Ji-hyeon could hear were her sisters screaming as they were dragged up this very gravel path to the temple built around the Othean Gate. She imagined her first father’s eternally calm, reasonable voice rising to the breaking point as he pleaded for the lives of his daughters and their household, begging their regent to put the blame for Ji-hyeon’s crimes on him alone. How silent the steps to the temple must have seemed, once the last whimpering member of her house was cast into the First Dark as punishment for a crime of which both they and Ji-hyeon were totally innocent…
“… and the estate has been burned to the foundations, which have been unearthed and cast into the sea,” the empress was saying as the roaring wave of images in Ji-hyeon’s skull receded, returning her to this calamitous moment. “The stairway to the inner bay has been blasted, along with the harbor, and the grounds salted down to the smallest cliff garden, so that Hwabun is never again mistaken for a territory of the Immaculate Isles instead of what it is—a dead rock in the Haunted Sea, unfit for life of any sort. And that is all I have to say.”
In the lull that followed this pronouncement it was so quiet that both the Cobalt Company and the Immaculate army who surrounded them must have heard Ji-hyeon’s heart shatter like a dropped teacup, and her second father’s along with it. And then Kang-ho was screaming, screaming so loudly Ji-hyeon never heard the bows twang. She saw them release, though, and as the flying arrows cast her into momentary shade she leaped to her feet, not even thinking, just doing, as she had in this field a year before when she’d snuck away from the dull festival and her dull fiancé and found sport among the pumpkin devils.
But before she could fully draw her swords the arrows struck.
It was Empress Ryuki’s cruelest trick yet, for not a single arrow was aimed at Ji-hyeon, the cloud of white-fletched shafts studding the ground around her… and her father. Kang-ho had taken two steps toward his daughter, perhaps trying to shield her, and now he pitched to the ground, a dozen arrows sprouting from his slight potbelly, his gentle hands, his pleasant face. It happened so fast the blood didn’t even begin to ooze out around the arrows until his spasms made the terra-cotta gravel click and clatter around him. Oblivious to the empress’s shouts behind her, Ji-hyeon took a step toward her last remaining family member, her boots rustling through the grove of arrows embedded in the path, when Fellwing fell limply from her shoulder, landing in the gravel at Kang-ho’s feet.
Ji-hyeon stopped, staring down at her shivering devil—when they’d come through the Gate together but minutes before she’d been as black and healthy as she’d ever been, but now the little owlbat was as white as a bleached skull, her roundness withered to a bone-showing gauntness. Then Ji-hyeon understood what must have happened, and snapping out of her torpor, snatched Fellwing off the path, because while it was too late for her father, the devil might yet be saved. Spinning back to face the empress, Ji-hyeon saw the wide gap in the carpet of white arrows where she had been kneeling, an island of red gravel that Fellwing had drained herself protecting from the volley of arrows. There had been so many, and all at once, that the faithful creature had overtaxed herself to the edge of death.
Empress Ryuki was peevishly giving orders, but her insistence on making a classy spectacle had undone her plan—Fellwing would no longer be able to shield Ji-hyeon, but none of the archers had extra arrows. Everyone looked embarrassed, and nobody knew what to do.
Clutching Fellwing to her chest with her good hand so that the devil might be sustained on her broken heart, Ji-hyeon pointed up at the empress with the two remaining fingers of her left hand, holding the pose until the older woman looked back down at the path and saw the silent promise Ji-hyeon made her. Then Ji-hyeon charged, and her sudden movement in their direction clarified the questionable circumstance for the Royal Guards stationed on the temple steps. If Ji-hyeon had tried to engage a single one of them the rest would have easily stopped her, but drawing her two-fingered sword and battering their spears away, she shot up the pearlescent steps between them. A spear struck her in the small of the back but glanced off her hauberk, and then Ji-hyeon Bong disappeared into the Othean Gate for the second time in her young life.
CHAPTER
24
Best knew exactly what she would do when she finally tracked down her disgraceful family, but she had not known how she would feel. As a true Horned Wolf, she always did what was right without hesitation, but that did not mean she carried out her every action without feeling or doubt. This frailty was the design of the Fallen Mother when she had turned her back on her children to live out eternity in her Meadhall in the land of Jex Toth; if making virtuous decisions always came easy there would be no glory to be earned in faithfully leading a Chainite life. No, what confirmed their path as worthy of being followed was h
ow hard if not outright painful it so often was to do the right thing. Only by overcoming the weakness of the mortal heart could one aspire to live a truly just life, one where you knew you had overcome the mewling enticements of the Deceiver—the pleasures of such sins as mercy and forgiveness were fleeting, but the righteous who overcame these spiritual snares would find strength in the virtues of pride and hatred, and in the end all would be judged not by their thoughts but their deeds.
If Nemi of the Bitter Sighs spoke true and Best’s family had helped a sorcerer imperil the world they must be killed. If Nemi of the Bitter Sighs spoke false and Best’s family did not associate with a sorcerer, they still must be killed, for the crimes of abandoning the clan and murdering those who sought to stop them. It would not be easy, both because despite their sins her wicked heart loved them still, and because they were blood of hers, and thus would prove dangerous opponents. Best knew the pain of ending her son’s life in particular would devastate her, quite possibly past the point of continuing with her own, but she also knew if she had any hope of successfully petitioning the Fallen Mother to release their spirits from the Hell of the Coward Dead, she must enter her maker’s Meadhall with such honors to her name as to impress even the keeper of the Star and all its fragile children. Putting an end to those villains who threatened the realm of mortals seemed like it might provide just such renown, and for all her failings Best still nurtured honorable pride in her breast—not for nothing had she come by her name, and if anyone could put cold steel through the iniquitous heart of her own devil-blooded son, it was she.
Best had never considered herself an imaginative person. Sullen’s interminable songs had never conjured waking dreams to her mind the way her father said they did, even if she had appreciated the musicality of his skill and feigned interest out of love. Yet ever since setting out from the Frozen Savannahs she had been unable to stop herself from picturing what it might be like, their reunion, even though she knew she could not possibly predict the particulars. Some scenarios ended quicker than others, but in all of them Sullen overheard her slinking approach, the boy too much her son to be taken unawares even by a huntress of her quality. But now that she had finally found him, even this seemingly obvious detail was proven wrong, the boy as deaf as those savages who refused to hear the gospel of the Burnished Chain.
He was distracted, consumed with the girl he spoke with, and as Best padded from tree to tree watching them, her disappointment in her son’s final failure to live up to his heritage turned into stark fury, a virtue she had never before felt to such degree. Her son, the boy she had convinced her anxious husband to keep at his teat instead of giving over to the poison oracle to be trained as a possible successor the way devil-blooded babes traditionally were, her little Sullen… he was actually kissing this Immaculate girl, as if he hadn’t sinned enough against the laws of the Horned Wolf already. Not that any member of the clan would have ever let him into their hut, anathema that he was, but Horned Wolves did not mate outside their pack, this was sacrosanct. He could not have hurt his mother more if she had caught him consorting with a Jackal Person.
In her righteous anger, she misstepped in the unfamiliar leaves of this foreign wood, and her son looked up from his lover, and the fear on his face disgusted her. He said something in Immaculate, practically roaring the words, and she cringed to remember how she had encouraged him to learn that heathen tongue—every village needed a trader who could travel to the coast and converse with the seafaring Outlanders, and while that duty carried the least honor in all the clan she knew Sullen could hope for nothing better. She had encouraged his wanderlust, Fallen Mother forgive her.
Sullen’s hair looked pale in the moonlight, as if his dishonor to his people had leeched him of even his vitality—it was as though his flesh already knew he had no future, and hastened his transition into the worlds that lie beyond the Star. His devil-cat eyes that had always been so keen when he had still struggled against his toxic nature passed right over Best, and she thought of something Father Turisa had told her after Sullen and Father had left, when she confessed her shame at not being able to detect the growing impiety in her own hut: the eyes of the just can no more detect a hidden sin than the unrepentant sinner can see the ways of the just.
She would have killed him then, before he could tally another trespass to his name, when Sullen’s next Immaculate exclamation cut off midway, and his fixed stare brought her attention to something even she had failed to notice—Myrkur, the horned wolf who served Nemi, had also crept forward through the forest toward their prey, and before Best could act the great beast announced herself with a low growl, stepping out into the moonlight. Another sign from the Fallen Mother, that, and another that Best could not ignore and still call herself a Horned Wolf. She would not commit the sin of mercifully killing her son quickly, then, but would pay him the slow, shameful death in combat he had brought down on himself. Stepping out into the moonlight, she let him find her with his corrupted eyes.
When he did he didn’t even seem to recognize her.
But then she could barely recognize him, either.
The Immaculate girl noisily drew a sword, and glancing over at the ruckus Best realized she had been wrong; the Immaculate was a man, though he’d been born in a girl’s flesh. There were hardly any tells in his posture or features, but Best knew without a doubt—having had her feminine soul born into a male vessel herself, Best could almost always tell at a glance when others shared her burdens, which was to say, her blessings. She wondered if Sullen saw anything of his father in this two-spirited Outlander, but then pushed the thought away, along with all the rest. Speculating into the motives of a sinner was itself a sin, and not one she had any time for, when—
“No!”
Sullen must have recognized her, then, just as the sun-knife sped from his fingertips, and debased sinner that he was, compassionately sought to warn his distracted mother. The black blur of the blades was too fast for any mortal to dodge if his aim was true. She knew it was, the sun-knife destined for the center of her chest. Yet Horned Wolves are among the chosen children of the Fallen Mother, and more than mortal when they need to be, and Best spun out of its path. A single outlying edge nicked her shoulder as it passed her, the mild sting all the incentive she needed to return her own sun-knife to Sullen.
The one crafted from the remains of his great-great-grandmother.
The one that never missed, and always killed.
Unlike her son, Best made no sound as she hurled the branch-bladed knife. It would be her final lesson to her son, and she prayed he took this one to heart.
Sullen went for his sun-knife just as the horned wolf lunged… but instead of crossing the short gap between the trees to bite his arm off or impale him on its crown of twisted horns, it spun around in a whirlwind of white fur, and disappeared back into the deep night. His arm was already drawing back the weapon, and his eyes flicked to the Horned Wolf huntress, hoping she’d have departed along with her namesake, but instead he saw her focused on Keun-ju, who had stepped boldly out from behind the cover of the cypress, his four-tiger sword in hand. The huntress was about to throw her sun-knife, but none were faster than Sullen when he needed to be, and he launched his own cold steel straight at… his mom?
“No!”
She was even swifter than he remembered, praise the quick blood of Rakehell that flowed in both their veins. The sun-knife only grazed her a little on the arm as it spun off into the woods, but what had she expected, creeping up on him like that, what was she doing here, and why why why was her sun-knife coming straight at Sullen, unavoidably close before he even realized she’d thrown it?
Bad as dying like that would’ve been, what happened instead was even worse. Keun-ju stepped in front of Sullen, fast as moonlight reflecting off water, his sweeping sword even faster than the rest of him. The mad Immaculate tried to bat the sun-knife out of the air, but that kind of shit only played in songs, and only the most over-the-top ballads at tha
t. A smart man like Keun-ju had to know that move was impossible for mortals, had to know the only thing that was going to catch that knife was his throat. It scarcely mattered whether he was trying to play the hero or the martyr, though, because the end result could only be the same.
Sullen’s mind could be fleet as his feet, but not even his thoughts were a match for his mother’s sun-knife. It had reached Keun-ju before Sullen had even finished his thought, so it was all just noise after the fact; he might think of himself as quick-witted, but at times like this it was pretty obvious he couldn’t even keep up with what was happening right in front of him. It was over, it had happened, and he still couldn’t believe it.
Keun-ju gave a pained grunt as the sun-knife connected, but that slight sound was immediately drowned out by the echoing clang of metal, and a thunk.
Even batted off its course by Keun-ju’s legendary sword, the sun-knife had retained enough momentum to sink two of its thick black blades deep into the trunk of a nearby cypress.
Sullen gave a wordless shout of ecstatic relief, but it was a little early to get carried away—Sullen’s mom had started charging them with her spear as soon as she’d thrown the sun-knife, and Keun-ju was still swaying from the impact of deflecting the heavy weapon. Sullen dashed for the sun-knife that had almost ended his life, that should have ended Keun-ju’s, and grabbing the leather-strapped handle he yanked it with all his might. It was so well lodged in the tree it almost dislocated his shoulder, but then it came loose, Sullen pivoting on his heel to fire it at their attacker before his chronically doubt-plagued mind could remember it was his mom and do something foolish like hesitate when she was clearly here to kill his arse dead.
Except he hesitated anyway, even with his mom flying straight at him, her spear lowered. She was paying no mind to Keun-ju despite his being closer, and then Sullen saw why—the Immaculate had crumpled to the ground, the bottom half of his four-tiger sword still clenched in his fist… and the rest of the blade jutting from his shoulder, blood spreading out around the edge of moon-bright metal. It didn’t make any sense, it didn’t… and then it did. Keun-ju had claimed his renowned weapon could shear lesser swords in twain, but it had been no match for the heavy steel of the Horned Wolves; though he’d deflected the sun-knife, the impact had caused his four-tiger to snap in two, the upper half flying backward and embedding itself just above his armpit.
A Blade of Black Steel Page 53
