Stranger Rituals

by Kali Rose Schmidt

  The Praeminister gazed at her with concern, a pitying sadness in his beady eyes. He was bald, his scalp pink, and his wrinkled fingers clutched the armrests of his chair. He wore the gaudy necklace with the lightning bolt, the symbol of Krys. Wrinkles lined his gaunt face, and Scarko wondered if maybe she was already dead, and he was dead, too. Maybe they were doomed to haunt each other in some strange level of the hells.

  “Scarko.” Her name on his lips struck a memory, somewhere deep. “You are unwell.”

  If she had been able to move, to do more than sit limply in the chair she was chained to, she might have laughed. It seemed funny enough. But she could do nothing, could barely keep her head up as she looked at the holy man across from her, the one who had made her childhood a living nightmare.

  It seemed fitting he was here at the end.

  There were no gods, Scarko thought. None at all. Vojtech, clever as he was, had been deceived. Perhaps his visions were seizures, blips in consciousness. They were certainly not messages from the gods. The gods had never answered her cries as a child. They wouldn’t here, either.

  “You were to be executed a week ago, but I convinced King Olofsson, before he set sail for Zussia with his family, to let me work with you while he is gone. To let me lead you back to Krys. He considers any souls won to our god worth the trouble.” His voice was just as grating and condescending as she remembered. Still, she said nothing, and let her eyes flutter closed.

  The Praeminister sighed. “I know you have been kept at the Order these past years. I know you ran from your own power. I know the Djavul has hurt you.”

  Scarko felt a retort bubbling somewhere in her throat, but there was no reason to voice it. It would do no good. She did not have the strength to do so anyhow, her mouth was as dry as the Gotheberg desert.

  “But you can come see the light again. The Djavul has poisoned your mind. But you have escaped him, Scarko. Just as Krys would have willed it.”

  There was a flare of something in her chest, something like hope. Not for her; she knew she would die here, would like to die here, she thought. But if the Praeminister spoke of the Djavul that way, as if he were not here, then the Royals didn’t know. Zephir had not told them. The soldiers would not find him. He could slink back to the Order without harm. He could regroup and kill all of these shitheads.

  “I know the past week has been rough for you, Scarko. But we are going to get you changed, get you clean. We are going to bring the light to you again.”

  There was an image flickering in the dimness of her mind: a gilded room. A bed that stole her innocence—what part of it she had had left. A bed that had broken her, had stolen her dreams of gentle hands and loving touches. A man who had held her hand as her parents hung, fear in their eyes, searching for her in the courtyard.

  It didn’t matter.

  She didn’t move in the chair.

  Let him do what he willed with her. She was half-dead anyhow. She had always been half-dead, since she had left her village as a child.

  “I see you still have that bird.” There was more of an edge to the Praeminister’s voice as he spoke those words, but she did not care. Let him get angry. It would never compete with the anger she had felt her entire life toward him.

  She heard a chair scrape against stone, and let her eyes flutter open.

  The Praeminister stood, and he approached her in a swish of white robes. He bent down over her, examining her. She didn’t flinch. She had suffered the worst of his hands.

  He reached out a hand to stroke her cheek.

  “We will bring you back to the light,” he said again, murmuring.

  Her skin felt nothing at his touch.

  But then his hands went lower, to her necklace. He tugged at it.

  She remembered that fall in the dirt, in her village. The chaos afterward, being ripped from her parents as the local guards came, followed hours later by Warskian guards that tore her from her family. The Praeminister’s hand in hers as they attended the Kadezska’s hanging. The bird skull was a reminder of them, of her power. Of what she could do, even when the world had been ripped to shreds in front of her.

  The Praeminister tugged again on the necklace, and she realized he was trying to break it from her neck.

  Mostly, it didn’t matter. She should let him, she thought. Let him take it. It would do her no good; it had never done her any good. The bird’s skull was too small to inflict damage, even with her blood upon it. Too small to make a difference.

  But as he yanked again, harder, her head jerking forward, something else flashed in her mind. Klaus. Yezedi. Vojtech. Ida. Someone had blown up those ships as Zephir had found her. Ida had likely known about his plan all along, and Jalde, too. But Ida had tried to buy her seconds of time.

  Scarko’s eyes snapped open, and taking the chair with her, she pressed her toes to the floor and growled at the Praeminister, lunging forward. It took all of her strength, but it was enough to make him stumble back, beady eyes wide, his hand that had been trying to break her necklace trembling.

  She could go nowhere, chained to that chair, but she didn’t need to. She just needed him to be afraid. Like she had always been.

  Guards entered the room quickly.

  “That’s enough for today,” one said sternly, and they undid her chains, wrenched her arms behind her back to shackle her again, and shuffled her out of the room, to the tiny cell with the hay and the filth. The tiny cell that kept her out of the hands of the Praeminister.

  16

  Count to Thirteen

  Someone changed her jumper. She didn’t know who, only that she woke up in clothes that weren’t wet, that didn’t smell of her own filth. But no one had given her blood or offered her raw meat and the ache gnawed at her in a way that made everything else seem numb. When the door to her room opened one day—it could have been months, years, seconds after she had seen the Praeminister—and Zephir Crista stood in the doorway, she thought she had made it to hells.

  But with a guard beyond the entrance, watching her closely, Zephir walked into her cell, as far as he could get in the cramped space, and set down a clay bottle before her.

  She could smell the tangy scent of blood, so glorious it made her hands shake in the chains in front of her. Yet, she didn’t reach for it. If she did, her death would be delayed. How long could she go without drinking?

  Did she want to live?

  She didn’t think so.

  She took shaky breaths through her mouth instead, to keep the sharp, pungent scent of the blood away.

  Zephir cast a dark shadow in the small light let in from the hallway beyond the open door. The guard adjusted his stance behind him, to keep an eye on her.

  “You can’t die just yet, Scarko.” Zephir’s voice rumbled throughout the tiny room.

  She knew why he said so. If she died, the Djavul would leave. That must mean he was still there. Had Zephir alerted the guards? The soldiers? Or did he want to keep that revenge for himself? Why hadn’t he been able to kill him? Was Emil able to do his job correctly?

  Scarko pulled her cracked lips into a smile, blinked through raw eyes up at him.

  “And why not?” Her voice didn’t sound like hers, gravely and hoarse. It felt like chewing rocks to speak three words.

  He frowned. “There’s enough time for death yet.” He glanced back at the guard who stood hovering in the doorway, then he turned back to her. “You won’t have to see the Praeminister again.”

  She closed her eyes and said nothing, her breathing coming in labored, shaky inhales, and fast, panting exhales.

  “I’m sorry he came, yesterday,” Zephir continued.

  She ignored him, but started to breathe through her nose again, and the blood smelled so damn good.

  Zephir reached for the clay jar. She willed herself not to move, not to take it from his hands, to snatch it before he could leave. But he didn’t turn around and walk out.

  Instead, as her eyes flew open, he grabbed her chin, pried her dr
y mouth open with his warm fingers, and poured the blood down her throat.

  She sputtered on the wetness, the hydration. The food. He paused, letting her sore throat swallow, then poured the rest down.

  When he was done, he set the jar back at her feet.

  Her head felt dizzy as the blood ran through her.

  He looked down at her once more, then turned and left, the guard closing the door behind him.

  She reached for the clay jar in the darkness. It was enough food to render her awake, if only for moments. Trembling, she held the jar in her hands, chained together in front of her. Taking a deep breath, she hurled the jar against the door to her cell, where it smashed with a splintering sound into pieces. Zephir had given her a different kind of gift entirely, without even realizing it.

  Or, she thought bitterly, perhaps he did.

  Her head felt as if it might split open with every movement, but she got to her hands and knees, shuffled forward until her hand rested on a sharp sliver of the clay fragments. She clutched it in her fingers and shifted back to her original position, head leaning against the wall as she fingered the sliver in her chained hands.

  She knew enough about fighting, about blood, to know that she could shove this into one of her carotid neck veins, and she would bleed to death in ten minutes if she didn’t miss. And she wouldn’t, not even in the darkness.

  If Zephir came back, kept force-feeding her, she would not die, no matter how long she languished in this cell. If the Praeminister wanted her alive while Olofsson was gone, no one could supersede him, order her to be hung anyway. And the longer she stayed alive, the longer Vojtech risked his war, or his death. He was immortal, but she knew there was a way for everyone to die. The word, immortal, was a trick, he had once told her. No one really never died. She didn’t know the key to ending his life, and she doubted Zephir did either. But Zephir would find a way, and if he didn’t, he would expose Vojtech and Emil and whomever else had come from the Order. The Holy War would start without final preparations, and Olofsson might defeat the Vrakans again. Vrakan children would stay enslaved in the palace, under the care of the Praeminister.

  She couldn’t let that happen, not for her own life. Not for anything.

  Time passed as she held the shard.

  She wasn’t sure how much, even as she was more conscious in the darkness, thanks to the feeding. Around her, the scattered clay jug gave off the scent of leftover blood, and it made her mouth water. She contemplated the cons of dying, of taking control of her own life for once. There were very few. The only one she could think of was that she would not get to see the Praeminister die at her hand. But she would never see him again, she reasoned, and that was more or less the same thing.

  With a smile, she squeezed the sharp shard, felt the sting of blood in her palm and realized it was, indeed, sharp enough to kill her. To let her bleed out and leave a mess for the Kezdan prison guards to clean up after.

  It was a lovely thought.

  She pressed the shard to the vein in her neck, testing it. She would likely only have one chance for it to go through, to the right carotid artery. If she missed, it would make a bloody mess, but not enough to kill her before the guards came to change her hay. And then she’d live. They’d clean up the shattered jar, and no one would leave her with one again. This was her only chance out.

  For a moment, she wondered if Zephir had left it on purpose, to let her take her own life as a different sort of vengeance to Vojtech.

  How kind, she thought bitterly.

  With a few steadying breaths, she practiced aiming the shard into her neck, just letting the point graze her skin, stopping herself from going all the way. Strangely, she felt no fear. Only relief. It would all end soon, she promised herself. The upcoming Holy War would be someone else’s problem. The enslaved Vraka at the Palace would be someone else’s worry. And by doing this here and now, she would help protect Vojtech’s plans, perhaps help protect the Vrakan children enslaved, the ones being born even now as she contemplated her death.

  She let herself count to thirteen.

  A holy number for the god of war, Vojtech’s favorite, Ofred.

  The same number of hells in the Vrakan religion.

  One

  Two

  Three—would Vojtech give Zephir a slow death, or would he rip him to shreds so fast the fighter would barely feel it?

  Four

  Five

  Six—would Yezedi be proud of her sacrifice? Or angry she didn’t take more of the new god’s men out with her?

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine—would there be blood in the afterlife?

  Ten

  Eleven—would there be an afterlife? Who would she come back to this world as?

  Twelve—what was that noise?

  Thir—

  There it was again. Frowning, she lowered the shard of clay. There were whispered voices outside in the hall beyond her room, whispers she had never heard before. Guards? Zephir come to torture her with more blood? Godsforbid, the Praeminister?

  She repositioned the shard of clay. She’d have to start her count again.

  She sighed, starting back with one.

  But on three, the whispers were closer.

  A clanking of keys. She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t even kill herself without an interruption. She debated doing it quickly, but realized if someone were opening her door, they’d stop the bleeding before the ten minutes she needed to die were up, and then her plan would have gone to shit.

  Pointless.

  More whispers. Two people. They sounded familiar.

  The key went into the heavy bolt on her door. It turned, and then the door slowly swung backward.

  A flame sparked, seemingly in midair.

  “It smells horrid in here.”

  “Shut! Up! You’ll get us killed!”

  Before the faces behind the hovering flame came into view, she placed the voices. She had dreamed of them.

  Klaus smiled down at her, practically beaming.

  And Yezedi, controlling the flame, extended a lean arm down to her in the darkness.

  “We’ve come to spring you from this place,” she whispered.

  Scarko couldn’t speak. Klaus’s blue gaze, glinting in the flickering flame that Yezedi held steady, went to the shard in her hand. He frowned.

  “Vojtech thought you might try something like that.”

  Something like that. As if being half a second away from her own suicide was a stunt everyone was expected to pull once in their life.

  He reached out a hand toward her, same as Yezedi. She only stared at them dumbly. Clearly, this was another dream. Maybe even a curse concocted by the Praeminister to keep her here longer, living, so he could torment her to her last breath. Her friends weren’t real.

  They couldn’t be.

  She didn’t take their hands.

  “I know you’re hurt, Scar, but if we don’t get out of here, and do it fast, we will all be killed.” Yezedi’s tone was sharp.

  Scarko recalled that time she had slapped her for blasphemy.

  “You slapped me.” The words were raw.

  Yezedi sighed. “I did. I’m sorry. But can we talk about old wounds later? Also, you choked me with your bloodied palm afterward, so I think we might be even—”

  Klaus looked to Yezedi. “You slapped her?”

  The flame brightened and Klaus jumped back as if he had been burned.

  “And now you’re trying to catch me on fire? What kind of woman are you?”

  Yezedi shook her head and turned back to Scarko. “Please. I’ll apologize in earnest later. Let’s go?”

  Scarko still didn’t move.

  Yezedi turned toward the door, and abruptly, her flame went out, plunging them into darkness once more. No one spoke.

  Beyond the open door, there was a scurrying sound, as of nails on a hard floor. Everyone seemed to hold their breath. Until Scarko spoke. “Just a rat.”

  Klaus laughed so
ftly. “Let’s go?” He echoed Yezedi’s question.

  Scarko nodded in the dark, reached for her friends. They hauled her up, her chains clanking noisily, one arm slumped around each of them. She couldn’t hold her own weight. And the chains…

  “Freeze them.”

  “Burn them.”

  Yezedi and Klaus spoke in unison. Finally, Yezedi sighed. She felt for the chains, the link between them.

  “Scarko, whatever you do, don’t move.”

  Like she had the strength for that anyway.

  Yezedi took a deep breath and angled her body toward Scarko so she was still holding her with one arm.

  Fire blazed blue, deathly hot.

  Her wrists lit with pain, but Scarko bit her lip. The new flash of pain, she realized, was welcoming. It meant she was alive. It wasn’t the pain of starvation, or the numbness of cold. It was the pain of freedom.

  The threaded iron that had held her hands together fell away, leaving only the manacles and Scarko’s own raw skin.

  The flame went out.

  “We’ll heal the wound when we get out.”

  Scarko didn’t bother to ask which wound. Her entire body ached. Her mind felt sticky, murky, dark. And she still didn’t quite believe this wasn’t a strange dream as her friends hauled her down the dim hallway of the Kezdan prison.

  She noticed for the first time that they wore the black uniforms of prison guards, batons hanging at their waist. But the uniforms didn’t quite fit. What had they done to get her out? Her bare feet dragged on the floor. She had no strength to help them along. It was eerily quiet in the prison, and she wondered what time it was, if she would see daylight or night sky outside. Which would she prefer? She could barely remember what the sky looked like after all this time in the windowless prison, starving not quite to death. How long had it been?

  She didn’t dare voice her questions as Klaus and Yezedi carried her along, stopping only to shift her weight between them. The hall ended up ahead, and they came to an intersection, three halls branching off around them. Three options. Klaus headed left and Yezedi right, nearly causing Scarko to stumble as they walked in opposite directions, tugging on her.