“Oh,” he said anciently. “Tomorrow? Oh, that’s… that’s good. With—” He blinked and looked at me for help.
“With your daughter,” I confirmed.
He was either regressing again, or he had good days and bad days.
Once on the parapet, he steadied himself on the crenellations, running his bony fingers across the scaly-textured stone.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
I ignored that question, instead brushing a hand along his back, straightening him toward the field.
“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” I said.
He leaned forward, both hands on the crenellations. “Eyes are no good anymore, but good enough to see a messenger on this beautiful night.”
“It’s not a messenger,” I whispered.
I glimpsed to my right. Then my left. Closest guard was twenty feet away and moving farther.
The familiarity of ice coursing through veins numbed all physical sensations, except the hands. They were wet as always, one dripping sweat down my pants, the other dampening the hilt of my ebon blade.
They say you get used to this job. They lie.
“I promised you I would protect your daughter,” I said lowly. “But I promised nothing more. At least you can take comfort in knowing you’re my first.”
Mind ruined and dying, he couldn’t understand. “Your first? What am I your first for?”
Ebon hissed against its leather scabbard. A helmet turned twenty feet away, eyes widening deep under the brim.
“Never killed a king before,” I said. “Till now.”
I wrapped my arm around his shoulders, turning his sickly body inward toward mine. And then… I slit his throat. His eyes were scrambled, mouth agape. His arms flung outward like snapped strings. Broken at the knees, his body almost crumbled onto the parapet in a heap. Almost. Before it could, I punched my boot into his back, then gave him another kick. And off the battlements he tumbled, a whizz of blood trailing in his wake.
The guards atop the parapet tried to rush me. But arrows climb faster than feet can run, and the contingent of Rots hiding in the alleyway had ambushed them.
Some guards cried far below, but it was mostly singing steel and the deadened thumps of bodies that disturbed the silent night. Thing is, once your throat is severed, then so is your voice. You can wail all you want, but it comes out a soft, wet gurgle that no one can hear. It was better that way.
I didn’t hear Serith crash into the rocks his kingdom was built upon. But looking out over the edge, I spotted him lying in a mangled fashion, personal belongings, such as his skull, rather broken.
Strangely, this didn’t seem to convince Kane Calbid’s scout that the king of Vereumene was dead. He continued riding for the walls. Maybe he wanted to see Serith’s face up close. Not much left of it now.
Hmm. He was going the wrong way now, toward the gate, rather than toward Serith’s body.
I squinted at the approaching horse. Was that a… oh, fuck me. A white caparison featuring a golden galloping horse lay across the saddle.
Serith was right. A messenger rode up to the gates, which meant Kane Calbid’s scout hadn’t seen shit, because Kane Calbid’s scout wasn’t even bloody here yet. And when he did arrive, there’d be nothing to show him. He’d never risk his life coming so close to the wall to see Serith’s body.
“This better be a fucking good message,” I hollered.
The messenger sat up tall in his saddle. “The Order of Messengers comes on the behalf of Braddock Glannondil, King of Erior, Lord of the Glannondil Family, Gate of the East. He requests entry into the kingdom of Vereumene, governed by Lord Serith Rabthorn—” He paused. “Or the presiding steward.”
Huh. Well, as far as messages go, you can’t get much worse than that. Far as news goes, you can’t hear much worse than that. Far as life goes, you can’t experience much worse than that.
“And Braddock is where?” I asked.
“A day’s ride away,” the messenger said.
Huh. What do you know? You can hear worse.
“Well,” I muttered to myself, “suppose tomorrow’s as good a day as any to die.”
Chapter 10
A king rides alone for only two reasons. One, his kingdom has been sacked and there’s a good price for his head and an even better price if you can haul the treasonous bastard in alive. Or two, his cohort of royal guardsmen were murdered, but the king managed to slink away like a fox. Braddock Glannondil has the shape of a two-legged engorged tick and the agility of one who’d just drunk the blood of a wino, so option two was rather… unlikely.
Which was why I was quite distressed when the rotund lord of the Glannondil family came galloping through the fields of sleek volcanic rock, his morning shadow his only companion. If Erior had been sacked, the conjurers were probably responsible, which meant I was now fighting for… well, nothing, really. It’d all be over.
His horse trotted inside the gate, where I stood waiting.
Braddock clambered down, his loose-fitting plated gorget jangling against his hauberk, which bore the grinning jackal lying in wait in a field of crimson.
My Rots regarded him warily, their eyes carefully following his feet and his hands.
Just as the impetuosity of the ocean swallows up the shore with complete disregard for the shells, Braddock marched through the bloodied bodies of slain guardsmen, making no attempt to avoid dragging his feet across their carcasses or kicking their limp skulls.
He held up a helmet he carried in his hand. “Is one of your Rots a skilled blacksmith? Bloody thing’s been slamming into my head since I left Erior. Finally had to take it off.”
Silence. It was of the sharp, uncomfortable variety — the sort that’s preceded and followed by thinned eyes and hands that grip hilts a little tighter.
“Oh, piss off,” Braddock barked. “If you got it in you, go on and kill me. But know that I’ve got an army behind me that will enjoy ripping the gristle right from your bone.”
“I believe,” Vayle said, standing beside me, “we’re all just wondering why the king of Erior is here. Alone.”
In true Braddock fashion, he plunged his hand deep inside his trousers and whipped it out. “You see this cock right here?” he said, shaking the head at Vayle like it’d spit corrosive poison at her. “I can hold piss in this cock for twenty hours.” He stuffed his manhood back inside his pants. “None of my men can go twelve without bemoaning pains in their groins, then they soak the ground for five fuckin’ minutes. I don’t have time for that bullshit. I ride alone, because I ride fast.”
“May I ask why the urgency?” Vayle said. Her diplomatic language spun confusion on Braddock’s face. He had come in here expecting a confrontation, not acceptance.
After considering her question for a short while, he said, “There is a girl here who goes by the name of Lysa.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Lysa Rabthorn, the nonexistent daughter of Serith Rabthorn. We know a little about her.”
Braddock pretended that little revelation didn’t churn his stomach as butterflies fluttered in surprise. And I pretended that his search for Lysa didn’t churn my stomach as butterflies fluttered in dread. Pristia had obviously sent him after hearing word of Lysa’s rebellion. But why send the king himself? And why, if Braddock was telling the truth, send an army to trail him?
“You got a quiet place to talk in this shithole”—he shifted his swollen bags for eyes toward me—“king of Vereumene?” He grinned.
“I think we can find somewhere,” I said. “But let’s make it clear. I’m not a king.”
I nodded my head toward the keep and walked that way.
“Alone,” Braddock requested, as it became evident Vayle was joining us.
I turned and silently dismissed my commander. Dissent drew her mouth into a tight band of wrinkles, but she accepted my order without causing a fuss. She didn’t care about being included, it wasn’t that. She feared for my safety. The conjurers obviously h
ad secrets we had never been privy to, and if they could turn Lysa Rabthorn into one of them, what could they do with the most powerful king in the world? But I needed information from Braddock, and perhaps he’d let something slip if it was just me and him, bullshitting back and forth.
I led him to the keep and up the wooden steps inside, to the room where Serith and I had last sat and talked.
Only one candle remained lit. I used its wick to set fire to the others. The wax lay low around the candlesticks, and the flames coughed sickly, vomiting a sputtering marmalade glow that expanded and contracted throughout the room.
I grabbed an amphora of wine and waved it in front of Braddock’s face. “A taste of venom to start off this unlikely meeting? It’s good, I promise. I’ve had some.”
He grunted. I topped off two chalices and sat them on the table. I wasn’t much into playing servant or entertainer, but wine’s a great lubricator for getting fat secrets to fit through thin lips.
“This wine,” Braddock said, sniffing it into his wide nostrils, “did you drink it before or after you murdered the king of Vereumene?”
I sat and folded my hands innocently on the table. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that.”
“Then this meeting will be quick,” Braddock said, swiping the chalice to his mouth. “I thought we could strike a partnership, Astul. If you can’t even admit that your killers down there, or assassins, whatever the fuck you call them, butchered themselves some city guardsmen while you kicked Serith right off his bloody wall, then I’ve not got much hope of you telling me where Lysa is, do I?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up my hand. “Let’s ignore that preposterous shit about a partnership for a moment and focus on how you came to know about the events that unfolded last night. I’ll go ahead and admit Serith’s as dead as your old wife, though I think I was doing him a favor. Thing is, you were a day’s ride away when that happened. Who told you?”
Braddock scratched the edge of his long thumbnail along the corner of his nose, scraping off something that looked as though it smelled unpleasant. “The messenger.”
“The messenger? The messenger who said he was with the Order of Messengers? The Order of Messengers that requires each of its messengers to take an oath that their tongues reveal only the information their senders permit? Is this the messenger you speak of? Because I sure as shit didn’t grant him the permission to reveal anything.”
Braddock laughed and slammed his palm onto the table. “Power of coin, Shepherd. Oaths don’t mean a damn thing when you can buy ’em. If the Order was serious about their oaths, they’d cut the tongues right from the mouths of their messengers. Not a good recruitment strategy there, though.”
“Also not a good strategy to approach a man for a partnership after you sent him to a slaver camp. Look at what they gifted me with.”
I pulled up my shirt to reveal the branded S on my chest. Scar tissue had shined it up real nice.
“But you survived,” Braddock pointed out. “Something not many men could claim after they plotted to kill a king’s wife.” He hefted his elbows onto the table, rattling the thin supports, then shoved his wine aside. “Get this rat piss out of here. I didn’t want to have you die in my kingdom, you know. The last thing I needed was for the Black Rot to come avenge their fallen shepherd. I had more than enough on my plate.”
“Like secretly assassinating a northern king, perhaps? Or was it preparing your armies for the long march to Edenvaile?”
“I played no part in Vileoux’s death,” Braddock said, wagging his finger. “None whatsoever.”
“Well,” I said softly, “of course you didn’t. I know that it wasn’t you.” I’d seen this kind of thing work once before, on a man who claimed it wasn’t him who killed his mother, but instead a young boy named Phillip. Phillip was one of the many who lived inside the man’s head.
“You think you’re clever,” Braddock said, his voice a low rumble of thunder. He leaned forward. “You think you’re full of wit. Here you are, an adventurer, an assassin, a man who’s broken free from society’s domain. You’re of greater intellect and greater wisdom than us sheep being led to the slaughter, blind to the strings being pulled. Allow me to pierce your veil, Shepherd: I know Pristia was a conjurer. I’d always known.”
“Er, was?”
“She’s dead.” He thrust his fat hand across the table and snatched back his rat piss. He drank it all in one sizeable gulp, then threw himself against the backing of the chair in a defeated fashion. “Three years ago we married. One year and two days after my Gale had left this world. I knew before then what Pristia was. Over and over she spoon-fed me the dreadful memories of my wife’s last few years, dredging them up from the deep. “Oh, Braddock,” she would say, “it must be awful to look me in the eyes as you spill your seed inside me, knowing that it should be Gale whose loins ache from your thrusts.” Each night, each morning… every day, she would force me to recount those years. She was trying to break me.”
Hmm. Maybe Braddock Glannondil was cleverer than I gave him credit for.
In their bid to arrange peace when this world attempted to make them extinct, conjurers asserted that they could not influence healthy minds. Only the broken, the weakened and the deranged could succumb to their thoughts — the very people who they wished to help mend, or so they claimed. That’s all well and good, but the problem is not a soul makes it through life thoroughly intact. Experience cracks you. The years chisel away at your psyche. All it sometimes takes is a reminder of the past to shatter you. Anyone can become broken, weakened and deranged with enough pushing — that’s a scary thought when you’ve conjurers lurking about. Even scarier when they’re the ones capable of doing the pushing.
“But I’m like a fuckin’ wall, Shepherd,” Braddock said. “I don’t break easily. I’d buried Gale a hundred times ’fore I dug the hole. Wasn’t a bloody thing Pristia could say that I hadn’t already thought and then beat those thoughts into submission. But I knew what she was trying to do, dammit, and I’ll be fuck all if I let a conjurer sneak about freely in my kingdom.”
“Er. Well. That’s precisely what you did. You should have killed her on the spot.”
“If you knew a spy was pissin’ about in your shithole of a base, would you kill him?” Before I could answer, Braddock continued. “Or, would you follow him back to his camp to discover where he came from and what his plans were? I wanted to know these conjurers were up to. I wanted to know their grand plan. And so I played along, allowing Pristia to command my every move, as if the thoughts she tried planting in my mind had uprooted my own.”
I tilted my head. “And? What’d you find out?”
He chuckled sardonically. “Get Lysa in here. She’ll tell you better than I can.”
“Did she pay a visit to Erior and tell you the story of how the conjurers want this world for their own? Yeah, I already heard about it.”
“She did visit. Pristia brought her there, to teach her a few tricks of the trade. When she realized I wasn’t taken, she spilled her guts. And she told me more than that.” His jaw shifted subtly. “She told me how they would take this world for their own.”
“Right, right,” I said in the impatient tones of someone who was being read the same story twice, “we’re going to fight each other, kill one another and poof! The conjurers pop in, or fly in, or make whatever sort of fantastical appearance they please, and they clean up the mess. Got it. Heard it. Understand it.”
Braddock folded his hands. “So you also know that they’re bringing an army with them?”
“Figured something of the sort. Must have one hell of a place to hide an army big enough to sweep across Mizridahl, though.”
“They do, in Lith.”
I drew back. “Lith? Where the fuck is Lith?” I’d been across most of Mizridahl, and the lands I hadn’t graced with my presence I nevertheless knew the names of. Lith wasn’t registering at all.
“About five hundred miles ac
ross the ocean,” Braddock said matter-of-factly.
I blinked.
“Ah,” he said derisively, “I guess you haven’t heard about everything.”
“Five hundred miles across—” I stopped midsentence. I cocked my head toward the door. “Do you hear that?”
Braddock let his eyes fall into his lap as he concentrated intensely. “Sounds like”—the edge of his mouth curled up like the jowl of a pudgy dog unsure of the foreign food in his bowl—“like wind.”
Sounded like wind all right, if wind was being pushed and pulled, twisted and pounded. Through the walls of the keep came a whoosh. A heavy, constant whoosh that percussed louder as the seconds passed. An ominous whoosh that prickled the hairs on my neck and sucked the spit right from my mouth.
I stared at my chalice. The tiny red ring that formed around its stem, thanks to sloppily poured wine, jittered like pond water wavering under a subtle gust. I peered in over the rim of the cup and watched as the liquid inside sloshed about more violently now.
I jumped up and hurried to the door. The king of Erior followed me through the hallway, down the rickety staircases and eventually to the hollow chamber before the keep doors. Down there was where I felt it the fiercest. In my toes and in my chest, a deep, shallow whoosh that climbed up my legs and swept over my rib cage.
Unsheathed ebon blade in hand, I opened the doors.
I stepped outside. A smarter man than I would have backed into the keep, shut the doors, shuffled under a table and prayed that just a few of the gods people worship were real and, more importantly, merciful.
But I stood there. How could something like this exist?
The sky crawled with fiery wings, plumes of thin flames crushed under the pressure of the air as the birds swooped downward.
My Rots ran. They ran from the birds. They ran from the talons aiming for their heads.
They ran from their world that was on fire.
Chapter 11
I blinked. Well, I tried to. It’s a terribly difficult thing to do when crusty blood seals your eyelids. I leaned forward, but a steel chain looped around my waist tethered me to a pillar, immobilizing me. Rusty iron clasps bound my ankles and wrists.
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