Stranger Rituals

by Kali Rose Schmidt

  Her parents had known her gift was different, had whispered encouraging words to her when she was a child, when they lived in hiding in a village not far from Visla, where the palace was located. They had known, too, since they had taken her to a healer when she was a baby, that blood was the only thing she could subsist on. They had kept her secret, never made her feel unwanted.

  But that was all she felt in the Palace after she was forced to watch her parents die in the courtyard when she was nine.

  It shamed her that this wasn’t her worst memory.

  Her worst memory was something much darker, something shrouded in the gilded rooms of the Praeminister, his voice deep, crinkled, like his hands.

  “Scarko.”

  She shook her head, the memory sucking her in like a vast pit.

  “Scarko, you’re safe here.”

  But he had thrown her on that bed, had leered at her as she tried to tear at her own skin, to use her own blood against him—but it was no use. Mindeta ensured it, numbing all Vrakan magic, even her own.

  “SCARKO!”

  Her eyes flew open, her breathing was ragged. The Djavul’s cold hands were on her arms, shaking her. She gasped, his eyes searched hers.

  But then anger flashed through her, white-hot. The bird skull against her chest warmed too.

  Vojtech let go of her, but he still knelt before her.

  “Is that what you wanted?” she hissed.

  His eyes narrowed. “No.” As if he knew what she had seen. As if he cared.

  “Penance is pain,” Scarko said, her tone icy. She could not see Emil and Alexander, not with Vojtech’s towering form before her. She had always cursed her height—or lack of it. If she had been bigger, stronger, the Praeminister would be dead.

  “That pain will come slowly to him.”

  She had spoken of the Praeminister to the Djavul only once since she had been at the Order, when she had been two bottles deep in vin, a rare time he had allowed her to indulge.

  But the anger towards the Praeminister that lit his strange eyes made her stomach clench, something deep and low uncurling within her.

  “Let’s speak of the vision?” she asked, keeping her voice neutral.

  Vojtech searched her eyes, then nodded, slowly stood, and reached down a hand to her.

  The rest of the time in the war room was dull. Vojtech had told her the gods wanted her to go alone. He showed her Kezda on the map—she would cross the Gotheberg desert and come through the Skov forest that separated the desert from the rest of Warskia. He told her of what to expect in Kezda and where the gods believed she might find the boy, named, according to the vision, Zephir Crista. Visla, the capital city of Warskia, would be to the east, while Kezda was to the north, right by the Furlan Sea. It would take her several days, maybe a week, to reach the city; she could not use a carriage, so said the gods.

  “And why not? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she snorted, her eyes narrowed on the map as she plotted out her journey. The Nacht Lands caught her gaze, but she didn’t let it linger.

  Emil growled a warning, but she ignored him.

  Vojtech drummed his fingers slowly on the stone table. He sighed. “One day, Scarko, one day you will see what the gods have done for us. But if you read the Holy Writ, you would know the answer to your own question.”

  She turned to him, brows furrowed. “Penance is pain.”

  He nodded, smirking. “The journey will make you stronger.”

  “Make me suffer more, you mean? It’s winter.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She knew that once she entered Skov, she would find another method of transportation, but she felt no need to mention it to Vojtech.

  Alexander and Emil would take her place while she was gone; they were second and third in command. The Order was well-guarded outside and inside; she had no concerns for his safety at this point. The first King Olofsson had sent wave after wave of soldiers after the first Holy War, Vojtech had told her, but now only small groups came from the Royal Palace, or, apparently, stragglers like the one they had eaten that morning. Yet, the king also stationed Warskians to guard many cities by the desert to ensure no more Vrakas escaped to safety at the Order. It was why her parents had lived in hiding rather than risk the journey. In the end, it hadn’t saved them.

  “Is it really that important that a street fighter die?” Scarko had asked after Emil and Alexander had excused themselves, standing guard outside the war room to relieve the guards on duty there.

  Vojtech frowned at her from across the table. “He is murdering innocent Vrakas. He is as bad as the Royals.” He shook his head, as if the memory of the vision troubled him. “If he is immune, the Royals could capture him, study him, find his secrets, and create an entire army immune to our gifts. That would ruin the second war before it started.”

  “No one is immune to your teeth,” Scarko murmured.

  Vojtech smiled, flashing his canines. “I am only one man.”

  Scarko glanced towards the ivory horns. “Half-man,” she clarified with a lazy smile.

  They were still across from one another at the table. The effects of the vin had worn off, leaving her tired. But she knew she would not sleep well. She was to leave in the morning, at the fifth light bell. She felt a pang of guilt that she had told neither Klaus nor Yezedi she would be leaving. The Djavul had promised to take care of it for her.

  Yezedi’s anxious hovering and her lavish praise for taking on a mission ordained by the gods would have been more trouble than it was worth to do it herself.

  “Why do you have horns?” she asked, a question she had thought much on before but never voiced.

  Something like amusement crossed Vojtech’s smooth face. “What a rude question.”

  She shrugged. “None of us do.”

  “Horns would suit you, I think.”

  For a reason she couldn’t explain, even though three feet separated them across the table, she felt something like warm desire at his words.

  He cocked his head; he had noticed. “You would want them?” he asked, his voice soft.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” Even as she felt the blush on her neck, beneath her bird skull necklace, she wouldn’t let him deflect her.

  He sighed, drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know. I suppose it has something to do with my…appetite.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, and she wondered what other secrets he was harboring.

  “Haven’t you asked the gods?” She shifted in her chair and crossed one leg over the other.

  Vojtech nodded. “There were once all types of strange creatures throughout the continent.” He gestured towards her, and she resisted the urge to glance again at the mountainous Nacht Lands on the map. “You and I are unique, it seems. No wind, no fire, no ice, no shadows, even.”

  “Is that what you would choose, if you could be a normal Vraka? The shadows? A Skuggmat?” She was leaning towards the table, curious. It was what she would have chosen for herself. No blood, no bones, no mess.

  He seemed to consider. “Perhaps. I like the dark things.”

  A shiver went down her spine. She did, too. But she didn’t say as much.

  “What if I don’t return from this? What if this boy bests me?” She leaned back, one leg bouncing over the other. She wasn’t scared. Not exactly. But being away from Vojtech…she would never admit how much she didn’t want to leave him.

  “You will return to me.” The way he said it, his eyes dark, like a promise, helped her relax. Just a little.

  “I would hate to die away from you.” Scarko smiled, then stood, stretching. “I should pack.”

  The Djavul’s eyes seemed to snake over her frame, but when she blinked, he was looking only at her own green-brown eyes.

  He smiled at her. “I will see you off in the morning. Try to sleep?”

  She laughed.

  Impossible.

  3

  Blood in the Sand

  The fifth light bell tolled dist
antly, but Scarko was already standing at the Order’s main entrance, empty save for Shadow guards, some with swords across their backs or knives at their hips. Emil and Alexander stood a little way beyond her, while Vojtech smoothed his cold hand over her braided hair, a messy job she had done herself.

  At his touch, a shiver ran the length of her body.

  He smiled, as if he knew, taking her hands in his cold ones.

  He rested his brow against hers, leaning down as he did so. If any of the guards thought it strange, none portrayed it. She wondered, briefly, what they thought about her relationship to their leader. She wondered what she thought of it…if it were even a relationship at all. She hadn’t seen, in the two years she had been there, Vojtech so much as hug anyone else. He didn’t even shake hands.

  But here he was, brow to brow with her, the scent of fresh earth surrounding them.

  “Saints speed, little one.”

  She stiffened at the words. “I’ll be back soon, tall one.”

  He smiled, took her face in his cold hands. “Return to me.”

  And with that, she hefted the light pack onto her back and pulled up the hood of the black, fur-lined coat that she wore over her grey cloak. She ensured her boots were tied tight, and without a wave, she walked through the great Order doors, out into the cold Gotheberg desert. The winter winds whipped the sand, scattering it like dark blonde halos. She glanced back once at the gleaming walls and high turrets of the Order’s castle. The great oak doors were already closed.

  The sun would not rise for two hours.

  She walked along in the dark, headed north, the map Vojtech had shown her seared into her mind like so many other terrible things. There was a knife in her waistband and the bird skull against her chest, and it was these things she focused on as she put one foot in front of the other. It was unlikely she would find Warskian soldiers here, but not impossible. And then there was Maraz to the west, abandoned since the Krystwo took Warskia. It was a country full of rebels and pirates who would pick her pockets after she lay dying in the cold sand.

  She tried not to think of any of it as she crossed the desert, kicking the sand occasionally for something to do. That morning, Vojtech had presented her with a goblet of dark blood, and she had drunk greedily. It was like fine wine, the best she’d had in ages. Many Vrakas in the Order volunteered their blood for her, taken by servants so she did not scare them half to death sinking her teeth into them.

  But that morning, when she had finished, Vojtech had beamed at her like a spoiled child.

  “How did you find it?” he asked, swiping the goblet from her hands.

  “It was delicious.”

  “It was mine.” He had been so proud of himself.

  But here, out on the sands, she scowled at the memory. At him circling her in the war room.

  “Do you understand how much I don’t want you to go, Scarko?” he’d asked, his scent nearly intoxicating after she had drunk his blood. He walked around her, a finger trailing around her cloak, hand in her hair, twirling it around his fingers.

  “Then why not come with me?” she’d asked.

  He’d stiffened, letting his finger fall from her hair. “The gods do not wish it.”

  And that had been that. For Vojtech, no other reason was needed.

  When the sun had finally risen, Scarko strained her eyes ahead, looking for the Skov forest, just a hint of it to help her keep putting one foot in front of the other. She had trained, both physically and with her gifts, since she was a child in the Palace and even in the Order. Trained with her blood and with knives. But this endless expanse of sand was…boring. She flexed her fingers in blood red leather gloves.

  “Just one foot in front of the other, Kadezska. You’ll save my entire country, Kadezska. You won’t die in the arctic chill of the Gotheberg winds, Kadezska.”

  A blast of icy wind gusted over the hood of her grey cloak and her black one, blowing harshly against her face. It wasn’t that she had never ventured through the desert in the winter—she had ridden in the Djavul’s black velvet carriage many times. But since the gods had shown Vojtech a vision of her crossing alone…she cursed the wretched boy for being so faithful to their teachings.

  “I hate you all,” she muttered to the gods, leaning into the wind. If Yezedi could hear her now, she’d burn all of her hair off before Vojtech could skewer her with his horns.

  Yezedi had once slapped her across the face for taking the god of sand’s name in vain as they had trained among the grueling heat of Gotheberg summers. Scarko had lifted her bloodied palm—from practicing on the other Shadows—and gripped Yezedi’s neck so hard the girl had turned blue, her skin bubbling beneath Scarko’s fingers.

  It was how they had become friends in the first place.

  Vojtech had promoted her to Shadow service within days after he learned of her strange gift and watched her melt the skin off one of the others in the Order with her blood. It was the first time, since her parents, that she could remember someone being pleased with her gift. Even the Praeminister and the general of the Warskian army had been at once disgusted and in awe of her powers. Something to treasure, and something to exploit.

  But Vojtech had not flinched when she told him she survived on blood alone, had not so much as frowned when she made rat skeletons dance across the sands with her blood. He had been utterly delighted and had taken her in his arms in a bony hug.

  It had almost been enough to help her sleep at night within the safe walls of the Vrakan Castle.

  Almost.

  Exhaustion was her constant companion, and it was only when she had overdone it on vin that sleep came to her. And Vojtech knew it, so he kept a close eye on her intake.

  “My personal guard cannot be an alcoholic, Scarko,” he had said kindly, ripping a half empty bottle from her hands one night as they plotted—as they always did—overthrowing the Warskian King in the war room. She had tried to yank it back, and he had very calmly shattered it against the wall without apology.

  She stuffed her gloved hands into her cloak, not bothering to tug the hood back over her hair, braids already loose. Klaus usually did her braids; he had had two little sisters before his father was killed. They were sent back to Beheni after testing negative for Vrakan abilities, with a message never to return across the Warskia border, least their brother die, too. Beheni was an ally of Warskia, when it suited them. But they were more concerned with engineering feats for their own people than what the kingdom to the west of them did or didn’t do, believed or didn’t believe. And they were too cowardly to go to war with Warskia, even after their own diplomat had hung in the Royal Palace’s grounds.

  Klaus never spoke of his family. Scarko wondered if he was just grateful they weren’t anywhere near the Praeminister.

  As she thought of the holy man, legs churning across the frozen sands, her skin crawled, and for a moment she forgot all about the ache in her side, the cramps in her legs. All she could see was the Praeminister’s wrinkled hands taking her own, yanking her down the hallway where all Vrakans were kept in cages, drugged with mindeta. All she could see was the Praeminister closing the door to his glittering golden room, a smile on his thin lips.

  A shout roused her from her nightmare, and she stilled, gazing across the endless stretch of cold sand.

  From the west, three figures in bright red—coats whipping around them in flashes of crimson—came galloping toward her on horseback, no saddles, no reins gripped in their fingers. Scarko stilled, turned toward them, watched as they approached, urging their wild black horses on faster and faster.

  Her first thought: food.

  Her second: Marazan rebels, ready to gut her for gold coins, of which she had plenty, strapped into her pack.

  She reached for the knife at her waistband, held the crimson hilt in her hand, and rolled up the sleeves of both her cloaks. The rebels skidded to a stop before her, tossed their red hoods off their heads, their breath coming out in clouds of cold even in the sunlight. />
  Two women appeared with brunette hair pulled back off their face and sneers on their full lips. The man had dark blonde hair, short and wild, pointing up off his head in every angle. He leered at her, his eyes travelling to the blade she held.

  They might know she could do magic, might know they would encounter Vrakas in the Gotheberg desert. But they would never suspect her magic; only the Warskian royals and the people of the Order knew of it, and those that she had already killed.

  One of the women spoke first, a mole in a perfect circle beside her lips. “Do you want to make this easy?” she asked, the Marazan accent husky on her tongue. “Or hard?” she hopped from her horse and withdrew her blade.

  If they knew she could be Vraka, they would drug her. No doubt they carried mindeta, plucked from somewhere in the Skov Forest. The plant grew wild there.

  But their eyes had all tracked her blade; a Vraka of ice, fire, wind, or shadow would never have reached for it first. They thought she was an overgiva, like they were, judging by the knives they had withdrawn. Let them think it, she thought, let them be unafraid.

  “What do you want?” she asked as the woman approached her, about her height. The other two were still atop their horses, leering down at her.

  “Your coins. Zed, you call it?”

  She could picture the gold coins, stamped with the Warskian serpent, in her pack. Hells be damned if the woman thought she would take them from her.

  “Can’t help you there,” Scarko said, eyeing the woman’s thick throat, thinking of the blood she would feast on before she continued to the Skov forest. If Vojtech meant to send her on an adventure, he had succeeded.

  The woman frowned, took another step toward her. Scarko tossed her knife, so she held the blade in her palm.

  “Watch her!” The man’s voice was slick like a serpent across wild grass.