The Core

by Peter V. Brett

  Jessa pulled out a cloth, blowing bubbles of blood and examining the nose with skilled fingers to see if it was broken. She pinched at her brow to stem the blood flow.

  “You’ve got some stones, girl. If Bruna were here, she would rap your knuckles with her stick. She could never suffer a hypocrite.”

  “Ay, you can’t talk to Mistress Leesha like that!” Wonda took a step forward.

  Jizell laid a gentle hand on Wonda’s breastplate, but it was enough to stop Wonda short. “Stay out of it, girl. This was a long time coming, and needs to run its course.”

  “You’re the one Bruna cast out, Jessa,” Leesha said. “Not I.”

  Jessa threw up her hands. “I admit to all of it. I tried to steal the secret of liquid demonfire. Do you know why?”

  “Because you’re selfish and power-hungry?” Leesha guessed.

  “Because Araine ordered me to!” Jessa snapped. “Just like she ordered Bruna to train me. You think that was an accident?”

  Leesha blinked. It made an uncomfortable amount of sense, and explained why Araine so trusted the woman. “You weren’t so loyal to her when you were drugging her son.”

  Jessa put her hands on her hips. “You want to blame me for every bad thing that’s happened, these last months. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “And why shouldn’t I?” Leesha said. “I never would have come back to this cursed city if not for your scheming. Euchor would never have sent his flamework weapons south. Rojer would be alive.”

  Jessa slapped her, hard on the face. The sound was like thunder inside Leesha’s head, and she stumbled back from the blow, cheek burning. “Don’t you talk to me about Rojer. That boy was like a son to me. You think I wanted anything to happen to him? That I wanted to be forced to hide rather than attend his funeral?”

  She raised an angry finger. “I drugged Rhinebeck seedless, ay. That son of the Core had it coming. But Rojer and Jasin had blood between them long before you brought him back from the Hollow. Euchor’s wanted to be king since before you were born.

  “But you, you had the demon of the desert out of his armor. You could have poisoned him, or slipped a knife between his ribs, and stopped his advance. Instead you let him curl your toes before going on to murder half of Lakton, and enslaving the rest.

  “You think you can judge me, Leesha Paper? My girls? You’re as much the whore as any of us, though at least my girls are smart enough to remember their pomm tea.”

  The words were harsher by far than Jessa’s slap; they were all Leesha’s deepest fears laid bare. Countless lives had been lost, but she would not change what happened with Ahmann. Not now. Not since Olive.

  And in the end, it was Ahmann’s son who attacked Lakton. She couldn’t be blamed for that.

  “We make our choices, Leesha, and we live with them,” Jessa said. “But none of it matters anymore. It’s us against the demons, now.”

  How many times had Leesha said those same words, or watched Arlen shout them from a bandshell? They were everything she believed, and here Jessa was, explaining them to her.

  And she was right.

  “You’re right,” Leesha said. “I’m sorry.”

  “There have been some changes in Angiers in your absence,” Jizell said. “Herb Gatherers and Weed Gatherers decided we had more in common than we thought. We are the resistance.”

  “The mind demons have hypnotized half the men in Angiers,” Jessa said. “Made it so you can’t trust your own brother, but they’ve left the women alone. So long as no one attempts to escape during the day, or gets too close to the wards men are building around the palace, they go about their business and leave the women to ours.”

  “And at night?” Leesha asked.

  “The demons stopped attacking the walls,” Jizell said. “Some field and wood demons still rise in the city, and they’ll kill anyone out at night, but they don’t attack the wards or the men on the walls.”

  “They want you alive,” Leesha said.

  “Why?” Jessa asked. “For what?”

  Leesha didn’t answer. “What do you think the wall guards will do when Gared’s army appears?”

  “They’ll treat you as invaders, and fire upon you with flamework weapons,” Jessa said. “There are already Jongleurs spreading tales of the Ward Witch of the Hollow coming north to claim the rightful throne.”

  “Rightful?” Leesha asked. “Pether is dead. Who sits upon it?”

  “No one can prove he’s dead,” Jizell said. “The palace has been sealed since we smuggled out the Duchess Mum. They say it is for the Duke’s protection. Heralds speak in town square of Duke Pether’s curfews and new laws, designed to keep us away from the walls and the greatward they’re building.”

  “Night.” Leesha took out her wand, drawing wards to silence and mask their presence. “Are any of your patients affected by the minds?”

  “Not many,” Jizell said. “The apprentices question every new admission to probe for their influence. We’re blessed that the mind demons ent interested in hypnotizing the wounded, so there were none in that first attack. The stricken are new arrivals, guards injured preventing escapes, or the workers injured when part of the boardwalk collapsed while working on that new greatward. We have them quarantined.”

  Leesha nodded. “We’ll need to question them. Particularly the ones that worked the greatward.”

  “You may not get much out of them,” Jessa said. “They act open enough but get lockjaw when asked about their work. You need to circle the topic and infer.”

  Leesha nodded, looking to Pawl. “Are you sure you can still get us into the palace? The brothel tunnels have no doubt been sealed.”

  “They are…compromised,” Pawl agreed. “But they connect to others, known only to the royal family, that run the length of the palace.”

  “What are you planning, girl?” Jizell asked.

  Leesha ignored the question. “Do you have flamework?”

  “This is a hospit,” Jizell said.

  “I have it.” Jessa winked. “The Duchess Mum liked having a personal supply.”

  “Which no doubt disappeared after her Weed Gatherer committed treason and fled her service,” Leesha guessed.

  “Finally keeping up with the dance,” Jessa said. “How much do you need?”

  “All of it,” Leesha said.

  “That much flamework will draw a lot of attention,” Jessa warned.

  “Waning has already begun,” Leesha said. “Who knows what the minds are doing at this very moment? Gared and the Hollow Soldiers might be fighting for their lives. We can’t afford to play this quietly.”

  Jizell crossed her arms. “Play what?”

  “At daybreak the girls are going to blow up the greatward,” Leesha said. “And while everyone is focused on that, we’re going to sneak into the palace and kill the mind.”

  —

  Demons still prowled the streets of Angiers in the twilight before dawn, but Leesha knew the minds would have long since retreated from the brightening sky. They moved quickly under the cloak of Kendall’s music, visiting Jessa’s hidden cache of flamework then setting the girls in position.

  “Got maybe fifteen minutes between the last demon turning to mist and the morning work crew arriving,” Jessa said. “All the time in the world to plant a thunderstick, light the fuse, and walk away.”

  The rest of them made their way to Jessa’s abandoned school—now a garrison for Wooden Soldiers. Roni and some of the girls were already there, charming the guards as they delivered morning pastries and coffee heavily laced with tampweed and skyflower. Leesha and the others joined in while Wonda, an Angierian tabard over her armor, took up a post and kept her helmet low.

  “What…!” one of the guards gasped as his men began to drop to the floor. He stumbled toward Wonda. “Quickly, man! Sound the alarm!”

  Wonda moved as if to steady him, then shoved a rag in his mouth and twisted him to the ground.

  “Quickly now.” Jessa pulled the hidde
n latch that slid a bookcase aside, revealing a twisting stair down.

  Just then the ground shook, and there was a great roar as the thundersticks blew apart the boardwalk greatwards.

  “What’s going on up there?” a voice demanded.

  Leesha poured two chemics into a flask and stuck in the cork, giving it a brisk shake. This she threw down the stairs to shatter on the landing. The mixture hissed and gave off an ominous steam. There were muffled shouts and coughing.

  Wonda led the way down. She wore a filter mask, the wards on her helm allowing her to see clearly through the haze in wardsight. She was fast, and Leesha could hear bones breaking as she cleared the path. Even if they managed to wake, many of the men would not be able to follow.

  Leesha slipped the wand from her belt and held her breath, stepping into the darkened stairwell. She drew air wards, and a gust of wind cleared the fog from their path as they descended.

  “Kendall.” The young Jongleur tucked her fiddle under her chin and began to play as Jessa opened the secret tunnel nobles had used for two generations to access the brothel from the palace.

  Leesha nodded to Jessa and Jizell. “Get out now. Gather the girls and keep them safe.”

  Jizell gave her a quick hug. “Creator go with you, girl.”

  “Ay,” Jessa said. “Good luck.”

  And then Pawl led them into the darkness.

  —

  Kendall’s music wrapped around them like a Cloak of Unsight as she, Leesha, Wonda, and Pawl slipped by the corelings patrolling the catacombs. At one unremarkable wall, Pawl opened a hidden door that took them out of the demon-infested tunnels and into a narrow, carpeted passage that led up into Araine’s office in the women’s wing of the palace.

  But the place was not what Leesha remembered. The windows were painted black and covered with heavy curtains, leaving them in darkness save for their wardsight. The walls and floors had been stripped of wards, scoured with deep claw marks.

  “We have to cross the hall to the next passage,” Pawl said.

  Under the cover of Kendall’s music, they slipped from the office to find the wide hall equally devastated. Demons slept on the floor, and Leesha discovered she was holding her breath as they tiptoed past. Pawl led them to another room where the cold fireplace opened to a new corridor.

  “Almost there,” Pawl said, pointing to a doorway at the end of the narrow passage.

  There was a growl behind them. Leesha looked back, seeing nothing. “Quickly now.”

  Pawl nodded, hurrying to the door and opening it. Just then, the walls and floor behind them came alive, paint and carpet distending and turning to hard scales, molding into demonic form.

  “Run!” Leesha cried, dashing through the doorway into the throne room. She felt the mind wards on the silver netting in her hair grow warm, and knew the trap was sprung even before wards lit up in a circle around them.

  Wonda fired an arrow at the approaching demons, but it skittered off the wards and fell back at their feet. Kendall, still running, ran into the wardnet. It flared to life and she gave a cry of pain as she was thrown back, fiddle skidding across the floor.

  Leesha lifted her hora wand, but an impact ward appeared in the air, knocking it from her grasp and out of the circle. There was a tug at her belt, and her hora pouch was yanked away. Wonda gave a shout, hammering the meat of her fists against the wards. With each strike she cried out in pain. Leesha could see in the magic spiderwebbing through the air there were no holes to exploit.

  Pawl sauntered into the throne room even as the mimics began to circle, flitting half seen through the darkness.

  “You little pissant!” Wonda continued to hammer at the wards, seemingly oblivious to the pain. “When I get my hand on you—!”

  Pawl threw back his head and laughed. The sound sent a shiver down Leesha’s neck. When he spoke, his voice had grown colder—older. “For all your arrogance, you are no better than the lowliest rock drone, beating yourself to death against the wards.”

  “Pawl?” Leesha asked.

  “The boy’s mind is rich, for one so young,” Pawl said. “We will feast upon it, when we have no further use for him.”

  Leesha tilted her head. “How did you get in? I painted the mind ward on him myself.”

  One of the mimics shimmered, and as it walked up to the wards, Leesha’s heart caught in her throat. It looked for all she could tell that Rojer was standing right before her. “How delightfully stupid they are.”

  Another mimic shimmered, taking the form of Thamos so precisely Leesha’s eyes grew moist. “Even now, they do not see.”

  “You were always in,” Leesha realized. “From that first night. Araine didn’t escape. You let her go.”

  “It would have been difficult to unseat you from your center of power,” Pawl agreed.

  “Easier to dangle a carrot, and lure you like a mule,” Rojer said.

  “The boy himself did not know he was ours, even as he led you to us,” Thamos said.

  “And now what?” Leesha asked. “You kill us? Eat our minds?”

  Pawl showed his teeth. “When you are of no further use to us.”

  “Still they do not see,” Thamos repeated in wonder. “Pathetic.”

  “We’re pathetic?!” Wonda shouted. “Yur the ones hidin’ behind kids and changelings!”

  In response, the room brightened in wardsight, and Leesha looked up to see a demon lounging on the ivy throne, watching them with bulbous eyes. The coreling shone so bright with power, Leesha had to squint.

  Two other mind demons stood at the base of the steps. Their thin bodies were no larger than Kendall, supporting great conical heads, ringed with vestigial horns and ridges that throbbed and pulsed.

  Thamos lashed out an arm that became a long tentacle, wrapping around Leesha.

  “Mistress Leesha!” Wonda grabbed her, but the demon was too strong. It yanked, pulling Leesha from the circle even as Wonda fetched up painfully against the wards and was thrown back.

  Thamos pulled her in close, smiling in that way he had when they were alone. He caressed her cheek with his hand, feeling—even smelling—like Thamos. His hand slid up, gently sliding out the pins that held the warded silver hairnet protecting Leesha’s mind in place.

  She thrashed, but Thamos only grinned. “Do not struggle, my love. Soon you will have such a headache you will beg for my caress.” He bent in and kissed her, so like Thamos, down to his breath. Leesha tried to hide her revulsion, but no doubt they could see it on her aura.

  “When you leave this place, it will be with tales of our defeat,” Rojer said. “You will believe them. Remember them as if they truly happened. You will be regarded as saviors, and take command of your armies once more.”

  “You will walk in day, and ward your mind at night, even as you weaken your defenses from within,” Pawl said.

  “And the Hollow will be ours,” Thamos said.

  It was Leesha’s turn to smile. “I don’t think so.”

  “You are helpless to stop it.” Thamos pulled the last of the pins.

  The boy with the blood debt will lead you into the spider’s web, Leesha’s dice had said. Only then may you strike.

  “Now, dears,” she said into her warded earring.

  The demons paused, but for a moment nothing happened.

  Then there was a deafening boom that knocked human and demon alike from their feet. Even the demon atop the dais clutched the ivy throne tightly. There were more explosions, muffled by the ringing in Leesha’s ears.

  And then, through the choking haze of dust, morning sunlight streamed through blown window frames to crisscross the throne room. The mind demons shrieked, scrambling for the shadows, but even there, the light touched them, their limbs smoking.

  Micha appeared in one of the windows, pitching a spear of warded glass that punched through the chest of the mimic demon in Thamos’ form.

  Stela Inn bounded through another, kicking the Rojer mimic into a sunbeam that burst it into f
lame. She snatched up the struggling Pawl before he could cause any mischief.

  Leesha pulled free of the tentacle as Kendall snatched up her fiddle and Wonda charged from the now disabled circle.

  The remaining mimics and minds could not mist and find a path to the Core in sunlight. They ran for the exits, but Stela Inn was faster, moving to block one hall. They scattered, but Brother Franq appeared at the next. Ella Cutter at a third.

  “I’d like to introduce you to my Warded Children,” Leesha called to the demons as they shrieked and batted at the flames beginning to spark on their skin.

  “We don’t like the way you’ve been treating Mum,” Stela said.

  CHAPTER 38

  SHARAK KA

  334 AR

  “Damajah. Your holy mother has arrived.”

  Inevera turned. Lost in thought, she hadn’t even sensed Jarvah entering. That sort of carelessness could get her killed. “Show her in.”

  She turned back to the window as Manvah entered and came to stand beside her. Jarvah closed the doors, leaving the two of them alone, staring out at the rebuilt docks where Laktonians and Krasians worked together to salvage what ships they could, and strip the remainder for parts.

  “Never in my dreams did I imagine an oasis so vast, or a fleet so great,” Manvah said.

  “It will still not be enough, if we are forced to flee the city on Waning,” Inevera said.

  Manvah looked at her. “You would give in to Nie so easily?”

  “Not easily,” Inevera said. “If by my death we can hold Everam’s Reservoir, my glory will be boundless. But if at the cost of my dignity I can preserve our people to fight another night, I will take that deal and call it a bargain.”

  Manvah nodded, turning back to the window. “That’s the daughter I remember.”

  “The journey was uneventful?” Inevera asked.

  “The alagai tested us,” Manvah said, “but it was nothing ten thousand Sharum could not handle.”