However, if Backaran's choice caused death to stalk them, how could she not side with Nalcet against her own destruction? Choosing anything else was a heresy against her existence and those she sheltered within her realm.
Hate him however much she might, he did not intend to die and after all she had sacrificed, neither did she.
Again she let her gaze settle on those below, a boy looked up and, noticing her, waved. She raised a hand to him and let his smile warm her before he sprinted away to continue his game.
Sinda would not choose death. If it came, she might not fight it but otherwise, she would not choose it. Her peaceful, hidden, kingdom built from power afforded her by murder would not be sacrificed without due cause.
She turned from the sight of the plaza and returned to her common space. Some part of her whispered to prepare, but it offered no ideas for what. She brushed it aside and settled into her reading. One of her citizens would come to ask her something soon enough. The world would go on.
The Unknown Ruins
Warden did not chose their direction, but allowed himself to be led by those who had a better idea how to get where he wanted to go which was away from the coast. No matter how often the urge to turn the horse and head to the water, he refused it. It dragged him like hooks placed in his skin. His thoughts throbbed with a heartbeat not his own. He guessed it was hers.
At least if he thought so, he comforted himself with knowing she still lived.
Helenia allowed him to stay quiet during their movements, choosing to give him his mental space even if she couldn't completely give him it physically.
The specter of him turning tail and disappearing on her did seem to cross her eyes when she turned to him on occasion.
He considered it, often, and chose against it for the simple fact he had nowhere to go. Whatever he chose to do, he had no home. A professional choice he made long before he ever truly thought about the Immortal sitting on the throne. He could return to Utica, the place of snow and bad memories of starvation, but he had nothing there. He could go anywhere he wanted, but it would not be home.
Wherever she lived, there was his home.
That thought crossing his mind made him shudder.
He did not know her. The connection to Leviana had made him sick when he denied it. This one offered him much the same feeling, a stomach constantly in a state of turning and a brain gripped in a vice.
Leaned over the neck of his horse, letting the wave of nausea pass, he considered what it would mean if he did try to run from Helenia and make for the coast. If he did, she would hunt him down and kill him for choosing to go against her plan. He might, maybe, be able to outrun her henchmen, but even if he did, he didn't know where she was.
He spit out the distaste and sat up.
The long stretches of nothing left him too much time to think and wonder.
How long did he have before the Glass Blades found him and offered him a knife to decorate his back? If they caught up before Helenia got him to their chosen ambush point, would she turn him over to them and wait for a better chance to catch them off-guard? Yes.
"How long do we have?"
"The lake is a week of easy riding. If you can go faster, then we can move along."
Warden grimaced at the idea of having to be in the saddle for a week before running a hand over his fuzzy hair. It felt strange to have his hair cut down when it hadn't been done correctly. However, he took what he could get. Perhaps he would stop and try it again in a few days. He didn't need scars all over his scalp, but he did need his hair gone.
Returning to what he had been by returning to how he once looked.
Survival meant being at his best, which he wasn't. His body revolted. His strength seemed to always be a moment from failing. It frightened him.
If she were with him, he would be stronger.
Again with her in his thoughts, he passed a hand over his eyes and summoned a vision of her as she had been. He saw her standing outside his cell. He saw the man with her, the striped one. The one who made the decision to leave him behind and let him face the pyre. If he got a chance, he would stab that man. If only he got the chance.
Helenia moved closer to him, interrupting his thoughts with her presence. She wore a smell he recognized but couldn't name. One of her favored scents if he remembered correctly. Her way of making herself approachable.
His hackles went up then settled. She used it for someone, maybe him.
As she sidled close, he gripped the saddle with both hands and tried not to double over as another wave of pain hit him with the precision of a lightning bolt finding a single tree in a field.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I have a proposition for you."
He turned one eye to her and tried to keep his thoughts from leaking out his ears by sheer will.
"There's a ruin close enough for us to make a stand there. If you'd like. You don't look like you'll survive a week of even easy riding."
"Your concern warms my black heart."
"My concern is that you won't survive to fill your end of the bargain, nothing more."
He chuckled as he shook his head.
"You're wearing one of your favorite scents. You do that most when you want something from someone. So what is it that you really want?"
The woman turned up her nose at him and forced her horse to trot away.
Point to him in handling her.
She wasn't an enigma.
Jalcina was.
Or at least, his connection to her was.
Too many unanswered questions and she stood at the center of them all. Her and Leviana and Kendrick and the Black King all of them gathered around him in an effort to recreate his world. The horse misstepped throwing him to one side in his lurch. Warden spit to one side and tried not to see the blood.
Helenia was right. A week of riding might well kill him and Warden detested the idea of his own death.
Her second rode far enough away that Warden had to wave to get his attention.
"That ruin nearby, what of it?" he asked.
He stared at him with the distrust and distaste Warden's profession earned. Warden stared back, waiting for the answer to his question. Finally, Warden broke the silence with a laugh.
"Worried I'll cut out your tongue for talking to me? Or that she will?"
The anger flickered across the man's eyes, but he kept his silence before guiding his horse away as if Warden hadn't spoken. Apparently, he needed to get his information directly from her. Dealing with her directly was probably the wisest course anyway.
Helenia rode ahead of the band with her back stiff and her head high. It reminded him of their first meeting, she seemed an empress to him in regal gowns and fancy words. Before he learned how she rose to power by buying or killing her way to get what she wanted. Helenia was no more an empress than he was the Black King and yet she commanded others with near impunity. They fought and died for her wars and her whims. Once upon a time, he wondered if she aspired to the Immortal's throne.
Having met the Immortal Leviana, he had no doubt it would be a fight worth watching and Helenia would die with great aplomb. He watched her shoulders as they shifted back and forth with the horse's gait, hair swaying as if waving to him.
He wanted her, of course, she was beautiful, strong, and, to some, powerful.
All the things Leviana was except with the Immortal, it was no facade. Leviana would not leave someone who trusted her to die. Sacrificing an ally was not her way. Helenia had, and would again, let anyone following her fall before her.
He had been better off in Leviana's company.
Well, when one nests with vipers.
With an easy motion, he pushed his horse to speed up to catch his benefactor.
"What ruin are you discussing?" he asked her back.
Helenia cast a glance over her shoulder and arched an eyebrow.
"Prepared to be civil?"
He shook his head. "Depends."
"Com
e back when you are."
He rode close enough to grab her reins, a move that almost dumped him to the ground and gave him control of her horse.
"You have my life, that's all you need. Civility be damned."
"Oh really?" She did nothing and he knew she kept her hands where he could see to avoid the others in her party reaching for their weapons. No need for anyone to go after him without cause. He blundered. She had backup, he didn't.
"Tell me what I need to know to make the choice you're offering me."
She quirked a smile at him.
"It's off the trade route and few go there. It might be a better spot for our ambush than our original choice. And its closer. Beyond that, you don't need to know."
Warden ran through his options. He had chosen the original ambush point. Now Helenia planned to change it to a place he didn't know or recognize. A place he hadn't even heard of.
"Does it have a name?"
"What does that matter?"
"Name it."
"I can't. It's just a ruin in the middle of nowhere. It isn't strategic. It must have been inhabited once, though no one remembers by who."
Relinquishing control of her horse, Warden settled back and tried to pull his thoughts together.
"Why are we really detouring there?"
Her sealed lips did not look inviting, but he forced himself to stare at them to avoid her eyes. He couldn't miss the lie there and for the first time, he didn't want to know she intended to betray him. The knowledge she had planned this all along flitted past him, taking him in, letting him choose a route, and then detouring them to some place he knew nothing about. Her explanation of her agenda rang suspect with this new information.
She told him what he wanted to hear, exactly what he expected from her.
Warden pulled his horse to a stop and let her continue. Around him, her mercenaries continued to move, but he had no illusions about them watching him. If he made one wrong move, he would face them all.
In his current state, the fight was unwinnable.
He escaped an almost certain execution for another not quite as certain.
With a slap of the reins, he urged his horse forward again. The animal obeyed, but turned to look at him as if to ask why they were starting and stopping so much when they were with a group. He offered it a piece of a smile and leaned forward to whisper a platitude in its ear.
Knowing he couldn't trust her didn't bring him any comfort and for the first time since he huddled at his mother's skirts while they both hid in the snow, he knew he needed it.
If he ran for the coast, he wouldn't make it.
If he didn't, his doom might not be certain, but it swung close like a murderer's sword. Good thing he had skill enough to duck.
Rise of the Lascha
Night aboard a ship surrounded by the bodies in the shallow water stunk. They should have pushed off from the shoals and into the water to await the turn of the tide, but they hadn't. Leaf refused. Jalcina did nothing to persuade him otherwise. Instead she stewed inside the mock cabin, the heat turning the smell rancid in her nose. She had never considered being surrounded by the dead, the movement of the water too lazy to do more than stir them like bits of meat in a ever moving soup.
There were certainly creatures feasting on the exposed flesh. Life did not wait long to consume. Jalcina knew that. What the world did not take, the wolves would or whatever the oceans answer to wolves would.
With nothing to mark time, the night stretched on without apology and Jalcina laid in the stifling heat waiting for something to change.
A rising hum brought her back to the world driving away the thoughts of what might be waiting beneath the waves and drawing her to the idea something far closer.
Leaf should have been outside on the deck, holding vigil over his fallen captain. He chose to go get the body, slogging through the knee deep water to rescue someone who no longer lived. Undoubtedly, the rest of the crew would be with him.
The shouting pierced the world above the hum and Jalcina rolled over to try and see under the door. Not even light to greet her eyes. Feet drummed the wood and drove home the fact others ran. At the door, she peeked, expecting some emergency.
She pressed the door shut against the sight and put her back to it with horror crawling down her skin. Things with disjointed faces clambered across the deck with a staccato thud, eyes rolling unfocused as they chased the crew who sought to stand against them. Monsters.
Just as he had been a monster.
The sight of Mekan with his face coming apart and eyes full of terrifying awareness. He knew his monstrosity.
He was Lascha.
Leaf dragged her away before she got close enough to touch, but the look of his skin begged her to find out if it were wood or skin. He hadn't wanted her to know. He hadn't wanted her to stay in Cross. He hadn't wanted her to be touched by the whatever he was or whatever created him. Leaf had said the Lascha were lonely.
Mekan dragged her to Wrepta in hopes of changing something.
Banging on the door slid her across the floor with a grunt.
They wanted in.
Jalcina did not want them in.
Splintering wood brought her attention back to the present with a snap. Enclosed in a space she could lie down in didn't make it any less a prison. Outside the door, screams rose into the night as the crew confronted creatures many of them spent their entire lives learning to fear. Jalcina hadn't as much practice, but she had knowledge they didn't.
The Lascha, the lonely, whatever others chose to call them were the leavings of Wrepta's magic. They spread throughout the sea like a plague, offering few quarter when within their domain. Now with Wrepta finished with her final throes, they reached up from the depths to destroy everyone.
The door developed a hole as one of the monsters reached through it, the shock sending her skittering away. With nothing to hold it shut, the door slammed open and Jalcina confronted her would be destroyer. She took a breath, steeled her nerves and drew back a fist to punch it. As she did, others piled forward, trying to squeeze into the space of the door frame. They blocked out the light but Jalcina could not refuse to see their avid eyes fastened on her. Large and luminiescent as if lit by interior candles. Fear sought to crawl up her spine and Jalcina forced it back.
They would kill her, if she let them. Jalcina knew that. With that awareness square in her mind, she locked eyes with the first creature seeking to enter further as it struggled against its companions. The frightened sounds of the crew did nothing to make it easier for her, but she kept the fear under wraps. Her hands shook even as it strained forward, the disjoint of its jaw becoming obvious as the mouth distended to try and take her in. Given its way, it would take an impressive bite out of her and leave her with scars, provided she survived.
With uneasy motions, she moved forward as it strained toward her and placed one hand on each side of its face holding it transfixed.
Beneath her thoughts, another moved. Wrepta did not speak, but she offered Jalcina knowledge only the ancient city kept. These were her children, the creations of her mind, her loneliness, and her guilt. All things she could no longer deny as death devoured her from within. Their combined strength, embodied in Jalcina's hands, came to bear on the Lascha as she touched it. The flesh did not melt, but molded, allowing her fingers to dig in and leave impressions. It did not scream, though its companions watched with equal measures of fear in their unearthly eyes.
What they sought as prey was not that at all. It jerked back, trying to regain possession of its face and a keening sound rose.
"You are afraid," Jalcina whispered. "You should be." Despite the fear at the edges of her thoughts, Jalcina felt powerful. It did not rush to her, but settled under her skin with the awareness of an absolute. These things could not stop her. Wrepta made them. She was Wrepta now, the city devoured by whatever tied them together. Nothing would stop her from taking control of what she had.
Reflected in those eyes, she
saw her face. Her own eyes, brown and beautiful, once the pride of her family had gone black and wide, not unlike a Lascha herself. The sight shook her resolve like a ship in a storm.
What was she becoming?
The Lascha snatched back and the others escaped out onto the deck with Jalcina only moments behind. As she stood with the polished boards beneath her feet, Jalcina let her senses reach out around her. The rise and fall of the shallow sea around the boat hummed to her over the warm caress of the southern breeze against her skin. A few of the crew lay like broken dolls around the deck, blood draining into the cracks between the boards. Jalcina sought Leaf among them but he wasn't there.
Mekan stood with his funeral grab wrapped around him but one hand on a wide bladed sword. His eyes, she had considered them human before, no longer held such warmth. Had she once considered he would let her live? Yes, but that hope was no more. Any chance of him giving her compassion or peace had disappeared when his life did so.
"How?" she questioned. He snarled, lips curling back to expose inhuman teeth, as his long hair swung. "How did you become this way?"
"He made a deal," Leaf's voice came from behind her and below. He huddled in the stairway leading into the ship's belly. "He wanted to return to his people, but he had never been one of them. The Lascha came to him. They sought release." Fear quaked his voice wavering the pitch and making the words difficult to understand. As Leaf spoke, Mekan advanced swinging his weapon in an overhead blow meant to separate her head in half.
Navar taught her not to wait for a blow to land, but to anticipate where it would go and how to avoid it. His lessons reminded her of old times and a very simple thing: she lived. Navar died, she did not know how or care, but she had not. That truth helped dance her across the deck as Mekan pursued. Around them, the other Lascha ringed creating a wooden arena.
Jalcina stayed little more than a step ahead, thankful for the sparse, but present moonlight aiding her in staying alive. Fear kept her in motion.
Ruins of Fate Page 17
