She had not been born when the first Holy War came to pass, but she had heard of it throughout her life, from both Vrakans within the Order and people within the Royal Palace, and from her parents before they died. It had been bloody, invaders from the Marazan lands proclaiming the virtue and blessings of their new god, Krys, come to convert the Vrakans, to save them from their wicked ways, their pantheon of gods. The stories diverged here, as history often did. Those loyal to the king believed Krys a savior, believed that killing in his name was right. Lauded, even. When the Marazans from the west, who became the Warskian royals, took over the lands and encountered resistance at the hands of the Vrakans, they enslaved them. They dulled their magic with a powerful plant and used them in their own military, against the royal Vrakans. Those who survived the bloodshed fled to the Order, looking for safety, finding it with the Djavul, with Vojtech himself.
The king launched many attacks on the Order, all of which failed. Scarko had witnessed only a few bands of Warskians, usually small in number, sent to what was inevitably their death. But she knew from living inside the Royal Palace walls that the king was determined to defeat every free Vraka that roamed the lands of Warskia. The fact that the Olofssons had left Vojtech alone for the past few hundred years was testimony to their fear. How much longer they would bide their time, Vojtech didn’t know.
He never spoke of his own past, of how involved he had been in the first Holy War; Scarko didn’t even know his age. She knew he was frozen in time, appearing in his mid-twenties, the age he had settled at—a deception. He was, if rumors were true, centuries old. She knew, too, that she would likely age past him in a few years. He was the only Vrakan among them that was immortal and the only one with horns.
She sank into her bathtub, the bird skull still around her neck, her eyes closed, the blood from her hands staining the water red. It was no matter; she drank the stuff, after all.
The idea of a mission, away from the Djavul, was terrifying.
He had been her shelter these past two years, reteaching her of the Vrakan gods—Ofred, the god of war, being the most important to him. Often depicted with his own horns, he was the god Vojtech relied on for council regarding when to take back the Warskian throne at the Royal Palace. She had learned those gods as a child, whispered by her mother and father in secret in her small village; but her parents had hung in the palace courtyard when she was a child. Someone had betrayed them—a loyalist to the king—as another had betrayed Klaus’s father—a Beheni diplomat.
The water in the tub was hot, but she wanted it hotter. Reaching a toe, she turned off the cold tap, the stinging heat of what was left scorching her foot. She sunk lower into the tub, letting it bake her. There would be no arguing with Vojtech about the gods. He once told her he hadn’t listened to them many years ago and it ended poorly. She had pushed him for more, but he snapped at her with his fangs, and she had let it go.
None of the other guards, of course, had been around long enough to know, either.
Vojtech was a mystery, and she knew he liked it that way.
When she had scrubbed herself clean in the bloody water, she dressed quickly in black and slung the grey cloak around her, the shawl tight around her neck. She stuffed her feet into the black boots, pocketed her prized blade—small and wickedly sharp with a crimson red handle—and left her rooms, headed for the Glassmat corridors to see her only friends.
2
Klaus is the Best Flirt
The Glassmat corridor was obsidian like most of the Order, but paintings adorned the walls here, of glaciers and frost-covered mountains, snowflakes melting atop a heap of bodies. Glassmat magic ran through the blood of everyone among the hall, and Scarko nodded as a few young Vrakas in deep blue cloaks passed by. They ducked their heads as they saw her grey cloak entwined with black—a sign of the Shadow guard, the Vrajo.
She came before Klaus’s door and lifted her hand to knock. Before she could, it rushed open and Yezedi stood beaming at her. Yezedi tugged her dark red cloak, for Eldmat—fire—magic, up on her scrawny brown shoulder. Her long black hair was in intricate braids down her back and she stepped back, letting Scarko inside, then pulled her into a tight hug.
“Did you say your penance for the day?” she asked, holding Scarko out at arm’s length.
Scarko rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she lied.
Penance is pain. It was the first scripture in the Holy Writ, the holy book for the Vrakans, of which she had never seen before she came to the Order. But Scarko never said her penance; her entire brand of magic was derived from her own blood, a pain in itself. Vojtech demanded penance from every Vraka but did a poor job of following up on whether or not they completed it. She assumed he thought it too much effort. He rarely asked her about it.
His own penance was akin to self-flagellation.
She had walked in on him once, down on his knees, his own bone ripping through the skin of his arm. She had panicked, rushed to his side, pulled out her knife, ready to defend against an attack.
He had gently pushed her from the room, assured her it was all for the gods.
She glanced at Klaus’s red leather copy of the Holy Writ on the low table in his living room, before the roaring fire—likely compliments of Yezedi. Klaus himself was sitting on the beige couch, one foot crossed over the other at the ankle, still in the loose white cotton shirt he preferred over his blue cloak. He smiled up at her and gestured to the spot beside him. Yezedi hovered anxiously behind her.
“Can I get you anything, Scar?” she asked.
Scarko turned to her friend. “No, but you can sit down and chill out, Yez.”
Yezedi frowned, her hazel eyes narrowed. “It’s just that the Djavul skewered that Warskian soldier today and I know how you feel about the royals—”
“That I hate them and wish them all to die?” Scarko flopped down on the couch beside Klaus, who extended his own full glass of vin to her, alcohol the only drink besides blood she could consume.
Scarko took it absentmindedly.
“Well, yeah,” Yezedi admitted, taking a cautious seat in the lumpy chair adjacent to the couch. Yezedi was from the southern kingdom of Yuljan, and her nervous manners, she claimed, were commonplace there. Scarko suffered from her own form of anxiety, but it manifested itself in murders and mischief.
Yezedi’s came in catering to other people or burning them when they disrespected the gods or the Djavul. She swung like an unhinged pendulum from nervous flocking to pious punishments. Scarko liked her all the more for it.
Scarko took a long drink of the red vin, savoring the bitter taste of it on her lips, washing down the blood of the Warskian soldier she hadn’t quite finished. She saw Yezedi’s eyes dart to the glass, her full lips pursed. But thankfully, Yezedi said nothing.
“Have as much as you like. There’s a vat full in my bedroom,” Klaus offered with a smile.
“How did you manage that?” Scarko arched a brow at him. He leaned back on the couch, arms splayed wide, totally at ease. She’d seen his ice magic shoot through a dozen Warskian soldiers at once, freezing each of their hearts. And then she’d watched him crack a perfectly timed joke, something to do with heart attacks and salt. Even the Djavul often found him amusing. But how he could have stolen the vat of vin used for the monthly Sacrament was beyond her.
“Cook looked the other way,” he shrugged, but there was a grin tugging on his lips. Scarko knew for a fact that Cook had a thing for Klaus. She’d seen the way the man looked at him when they passed him in the halls, saw the blush on Klaus’s cheeks as he nodded at him.
“Why did he look the other way, Klaus?” Yezedi asked piously.
Klaus’s dark skin turned a shade of deep red. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Ask him.”
“That’s enough,” Scarko snapped. “I don’t want to hear anything that might get you locked up in the dungeons for fasting—”
“—you mean starvation.”
“That’s what I said.”
�
��Sex isn’t forbidden in the Holy Writ,” Klaus’s blush deepened as he spoke. “It’s encouraged, actually.”
“Have you eaten, Klaus?” Yezedi’s voice was mildly annoyed. She disapproved of sex in every form, but Scarko thought it had more to do with her own caged desires than complete prudishness.
“Oh, don’t mind me. I don’t eat or anything.” Scarko took another gulp of wine. If Vojtech planned to send her marching across the desert to Kezda, a port city she had never been to, she would need sleep. The wine was the best way to do it. And besides, she reasoned, the Vrajo at the top of the stairs would be on him. If he needed her, he knew where to find her.
“I assumed you had your fill on the Warskian soldier—” Yezedi began.
“You assume it takes one human man to satiate Scar? I’d wager it takes at least two, maybe three.” He smiled at her and she felt her cheeks warm as she thought about Vojtech’s hand on her chin, down in the dungeon.
“Shut up, Klaus,” she muttered.
Yezedi shifted, uncomfortable on the chair, tucking her slender legs beneath her. “I can get a servant to send us something.”
Klaus clapped his hands together. “Please do, Yez. I’m starving.” He turned to Scarko, creeping his fingers on the grey cloak at her shoulders. “You want anything? A bucket of blood? Surely the Djavul keeps some on hand for you? Does he let you drink straight from him?” There was mischief in Klaus’s deep blue eyes.
Scarko turned her face so he wouldn’t see her blush. It had always amazed her that Klaus, who had suffered at the hands of the Praeminister just as she had, seemed to have no qualms about intimacy. She could barely stand the thought of kissing a person, lest the Praeminister spring into her mind like a shadow in waiting.
“Don’t speak of the Djavul that way,” Yezedi warned. There was no humor in her words.
“Oh, it’s okay. He speaks of himself much worse—”
Yezedi opened her mouth to respond to Scarko when there was a pounding on Klaus’s door.
Klaus looked to the women. “Either of you expecting company?”
Scarko drained the glass of wine and set it on the table with a thud. “Nope.”
Klaus stood as the pounding grew louder.
“Maybe it’s Cook!” Scarko whispered as he walked lazily to the door. He unlocked it after shooting her a glare and pulled it open.
Then immediately dropped to his knees in a bow.
“Twoj śwetosc,” he mumbled—Your Holiness—“sorry to keep you waiting.”
Scarko stood, glaring at the door.
Yezedi had leapt to her feet and dropped down into a curtsy, even though the Djavul had yet to step inside.
His pale eyes met Scarko’s from across the room. Two Shadow soldiers flanked him in grey cloaks, faces set in hard lines. Emil and Alexander were the men she worked with every day.
“I need my guard.” His voice was smooth as glass, cold as ice.
Klaus stepped aside, glancing at Scarko.
Yezedi had her head bowed.
“Oh, just relax, Your Holiness. I was meeting my friends. Is it urgent?” Scarko’s voice took on a false pleading tone, the wine making her head spin. “Because I was having so much fun—”
Yezedi glared at her, but Klaus smiled, although he wisely hid it from Vojtech.
“Enough, Scarko.” It was Emil, the shorter of the two Vrajo, his tan face impassive as he stared at her. “Let’s go.”
Scarko smiled at Yezedi and winked at Klaus. “Very well.” She walked to the doorway, the Djavul glaring at her all the while. With a little bow to her friends, she pulled Klaus’s door closed and turned to face Vojtech.
“What was that all about?” she hissed.
“You were on duty until the tenth dark bell, Scarko,” Emil growled.
Alexander looked down at his boots, his pallid face morose, as it always was. “Careful, Emil, wouldn’t want those shadows to attack the Djavul’s right-hand girl,” he mumbled.
Emil glowered at her, and indeed, she saw wisps of black smoke curling from his fingertips, down by his sides.
The Djavul growled. “Emil.” It was all he needed to say, and Emil took a step back, the black shadows disappearing as quickly as they had come. Then he looked down his nose at Scarko. “Since you decided to neglect your duties, I trust you’ve given an extra penance? Assuming you already did your first?”
Scarko bounced on her toes. “I will.”
Vojtech nodded. “To the war room. It’s better in front of an audience anyway. And these two,” he jerked his head to Emil and Alexander, “need to know how to pick up your slack while you’re gone.”
The war room was back past the main entrance of the castle, past the obsidian chandelier that flickered a strange grey light during the dark bells, white during the light. Vrajo guards lined the halls of the black corridor, but even still, young Vrakans in purple cloaks—Vindmats, or wind magic—blue cloaks and red scurried about, all bowing before the Djavul as they spotted him, flanked by Scarko, Emil, and Alexander. Vojtech didn’t look at any of them, only stared straight ahead, his black robes whipping around him.
Two Shadow soldiers moved aside as they reached their destination, and Scarko entered the plain door of the war room. With a quick sweep of her eyes to ensure it was empty, she nodded for Vojtech to follow, Emil and Alexander bringing up the rear.
The room was doused in black, the only light an unadorned lamp above them from the stone ceiling. There was a long stone table that Scarko guessed could never be moved in the center and maps of Warskia, Maraz, Beheni, Yuljan, the Furlan Sea, and even the northern kingdom of Zussia that lined the space on one wall. To the east, past Beheni, there were the mountainous Nacht Lands, where no human ever visited. Scarko stared at it for a moment, as she often did, wondering what lived there, if anything. Vojtech claimed it was wild land, unexplored. Her parents had told her bedtime stories of mysterious creatures there. She tore her eyes away from it.
The opposite wall had depictions of the gods—Ofred, of war, Kärlek, of love, Sandstrand, of the desert. All depicted in human forms, Ofred with horns. There were dozens of gods—Scarko had never cared to learn them all, even those her parents had taught her—and the Vrakas were encouraged to pray to the god of their magic. Blüd was Scarko’s god, depicted as a woman, but nowhere to be seen in the war room. Scarko didn’t care; she had never cared much for the gods of any kind. Not after they had ignored her pleas for eight years within the Royal Palace.
Even still, as always, she glanced at Kärlek, a man draped in red velvet with a crown on his head, and wondered why Vojtech, of all people, wanted the god of love in his war room. He had never struck her as a particularly loving man. Perhaps, she thought, it was his way of trying.
They took their seats, the Djavul at the head of the table, his long, lean fingers steepled before him. Emil and Alexander sat on either side with Scarko across from him, slouched in her chair, the vin making her at ease in a way she rarely ever felt while sober.
“What will your penance be tonight?” The Djavul’s words were chilling, but Scarko didn’t turn from his gaze.
“What do you wish it?” she asked lazily.
He smiled, a cold thing. “I cannot decide for you.”
Penance is pain. She never read the Holy Writ; it was full of scripture she didn’t quite believe in. But that much she remembered, drilled into her two years ago when the Djavul tested her strange magic.
“Do you wish me to spill myself open? Request bones from your ossuary, make them dance? Should I drive one into my heart for you?”
Alexander coughed, bringing a hand over his mouth, fiddling with the hilt of his knife, tucked into the waistband of his dark grey cloak, with the other hand. Emil stared at her with dark eyes and amusement. He had resented her quick rise to power, himself placed into the Order when he was a child by his mother, a Yuljan woman. Vrakans throughout the continent were persecuted in various gruesome ways; many parts of Yuljan were no exception.
“It isn’t for me, Scarko,” the Djavul said pleasantly. “But for your gods.”
She rarely gave penance. But when she did, it consisted of getting on her knees, alone in her room, closing her eyes, letting the nightmares of her time in the Warskian palace take her to a place so dark she remembered what she fought for, even if the gods had never listened to her. Many said their penance by fasting, by praying until their voice grew hoarse, or, like the Djavul, some sort of sick self-inflicted pain.
But was there any pain greater than the Praeminister’s hands around her small neck? She didn’t think so.
If that’s what Vojtech wanted…
She dropped to her knees, right onto the stone floor, her dark grey cloak fanning around her like a puddle. Alexander’s eyes widened, and Emil shook his head slowly, as if annoyed. Vojtech only glanced at her with amusement.
She closed her eyes tight.
It came back to her easily. A cell in the Warskian palace where the Vrakas were kept. Her stomach always rumbled there; no one understood or cared that she needed to survive on blood. The best she could do was raw meat. She had killed a horse once for it and regretted it immediately. Not because he had died, but because the Praeminister had found her, scrubbed her skin raw, and taken her to his own rooms. King Olofsson never thought twice about what the Praeminister did with the Vrakas—the Praeminister was the holy man, ordained by Krys, after all.
Klaus, when they had met at training, one of the few times their gifts weren’t numbed with mindeta, had let her drink from him. It had saved her life those years there, and they had become friends quickly. While he practiced his ice magic, blasting through cement blocks with it, the Eldmats burned down trees. The Vindmats put out the fire with their winds, and the Skuggmats shrouded them all in darkness with their shadow magic. She had pricked her finger to bleed on bones and had smeared her blood on pigs the Praeminister set before her, watching as it burned through them like acid.
Stranger Rituals Page 2
