“Going to stay with us after all?” Zaira asked.
“Mmmh,” I agreed. I felt as if I’d been pounded flat and left to dry.
Kathe closed his eyes and covered his face with one elegant hand. “Please don’t do that again,” he said, his voice more subdued and serious than I’d ever heard it.
I stared at him. It must be the aftereffects of the poison playing tricks on my eyes; that couldn’t possibly be moisture shining on his cheek through the gaps in his fingers.
“I’ll try not to,” I promised.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The first bones lay scattered in pieces at the foot of a tree.
Zaira didn’t seem to have noticed, her eyelids drooping after trying to sleep in the sleigh as we traveled all night and well into the morning, with less success than I’d had. My body had been exhausted enough from the ravages of the poison to sleep through much worse than a sleigh ride. I’d only awakened when Zaira poked me to take my morning dose of elixir, delivered in the night by the second crow. I’d woken to the expected splitting headache and the far more surprising warmth of a Witch Lord all along my side; I’d apparently spent the night slumped against Kathe, his cloak draped around us both.
Now he half stood up as the sleigh began to slow, his eyes alight, leaning eagerly over the edge and taking great deep breaths as if he wanted to drink in everything around him. I could almost convince myself that I’d imagined the bones in my poison-weakened state, or at least that the skull couldn’t have been quite so round, so obviously human.
Then we passed a tree with what was undeniably a human skeleton impaled on it, a sharp branch protruding like a spear through its ribs. A violet uniform hung from it in tatters, and the bones bore scrapes and scratches from the animals that had picked them so very clean.
Zaira sucked in a sharp breath. Kathe, seeming oblivious, leaped out of the sleigh with a gleeful whoop as if we had arrived at some beautiful sparkling lake or perhaps a particularly fine bakery, while the horses shuffled to a confused halt.
Deeper in the woods off the road, more skeletons sprawled, some with scraps of flesh still on them. Muskets and pikes lay abandoned in the underbrush beside some of them. One tree farther along the road had skulls festooning its branches like fruit, with no sign of the rest of the bones that must once have accompanied them.
I met Zaira’s eyes; hers stretched wide as my own, fully ringed with white. “What in the Hell of Death,” she whispered.
Kathe didn’t so much as glance at the bones. He laid a hand on a tree trunk, sighing fondly. Birds twittered in the branches above him, fluttering close, some of them coming to land on him. Something I took at first to be a dog gamboled up to him, tongue lolling gleefully, tail wagging; then I glimpsed its mad yellow eyes and knew it must be a coyote. Kathe threw a snowball for it to chase.
When it seized a human femur up out of the snow a moment later, shaking it vigorously, I couldn’t take any more.
“Kathe,” I called sharply, pressing my fingers to my temple to constrain the flare of my headache.
He turned to face us, grinning. He flung his arms wide, his cloak flapping out around him like dark wings.
“Welcome to Let,” he declared.
I stared at him, completely at a loss for words.
“Of course,” Zaira muttered, her voice heavy with irony. “Silly me. Must have missed the boundary markers because I was too busy staring at all the dead people.”
“Is this, ah,” I managed, then licked my dry lips and tried again. “Is your entire domain decorated in this, ah, motif?”
Kathe looked around, then, as if he were only now noticing all the bones, and gave a sort of shy grimace as if we’d caught him practicing some silly but harmless hobby, like designing fashions for cats. “Ruven launched an attack on my border here. It’s customary in Vaskandar to leave the remains of those who attempt to violate one’s borders as a warning. I forgot you don’t do that in the Empire.”
“You made a tree of skulls,” Zaira pointed out. “That’s not just leaving the bodies where they fell.”
Kathe regarded the tree in question, and his eyes narrowed in something like satisfaction. “Well, I was angry.”
Zaira gave me a meaningful look that I interpreted as, You’re courting him. This is your fault. I shook my head to disavow all responsibility for Kathe’s grisly welcome signs.
“And no, it’s not all like this. Just the border with Kazerath,” Kathe said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Songbirds had continued to gather around him on every available branch, even perching on the skulls, singing out their welcome. The coyote pranced off as if it intended to tell the rest of its family; with it gone, a trio of squirrels chased themselves up and down and around a nearby tree, their bushy tails twitching excitedly as they chattered to Kathe. The animals didn’t seem to be controlled in any way; they were all just happy to see him.
Kathe gave us a beckoning wave and began striding off down the road, his feathered cloak flowing behind him. Our horses seemed to exchange a glance between them, then followed at a modest trot. The sleigh slid along the road, passing between hanging skulls and scattered human bones as if they were nothing more than the trees and bushes we’d seen on the Atruin side of the border.
“And I was just thinking he might be all right after all.” Zaira shook her head. “No such thing as a tame Witch Lord, I guess.”
I could only nod in stunned agreement. It was too easy to forget, when Kathe was being clever and charming, that I’d seen him stab a woman in the back and bury her alive. One who was trying to kill me, granted, but the bone knife he’d used still rode at his hip, pale and wicked.
The love the creatures of his domain clearly had for him had blindsided me, though, and it shouldn’t have. “He’s got more layers than a Loreician torte,” I murmured.
Zaira cast a glance at a partial skeleton that hung upside-down from a writhing tangle of mossy vines in the boughs of an ancient tree. “Uh-huh. Some of them are a bit dark and bitter for my taste.”
Kathe dropped back to walk beside our sleigh, his unnaturally quick stride keeping up with the trotting horses. His breath misted in the air as he pointed things out to me, with great enthusiasm.
“That tree is six hundred years old. It makes your Empire look like a baby. And there, see that snowy gap in the trees? It doesn’t look like much now, but in the summer it’s a circle of the most velvety green moss, and it blooms with tiny flowers like a field of stars.”
Zaira pointed at the inverted skeleton. “And what’s that?” she asked ironically.
Kathe flashed his teeth. “That was an enemy vivomancer who thought he could sabotage one of my boundary stones. He’s lucky it was me who caught him; there are plenty of Witch Lords who would have made his death last for days.” Kathe caught the looks we were giving him, then, and sighed, a weight seeming to fall on his shoulders. “You think me barbaric, don’t you.”
“No,” I protested hastily, even as Zaira said “A bit, yes.”
“War is war. I’d prefer not to kill anyone, but if they bring violence to my borders, I will protect my own.” He lifted an eyebrow at Zaira. “Much like you, warlock.”
Zaira winced. I instinctively sucked in a breath to say something in her defense, but there was nothing to say; we’d left far more extensive and just as grisly evidence outside Ardence of what happened to those who threatened our people.
“Come on,” Kathe said then, his voice gone serious, “and I’ll show you what I’m protecting.”
Kathe continued to accumulate a following of animals as we walked. Birds glided along from tree to tree beside us, and a pair of deer paced us in the woodline. A wolf came and sniffed his hand, and he scratched behind its ears absently, as if it were a dog; after it left, a red fox followed him for a few minutes, tongue lolling in a grin. He looked for all the world like one of the paintings of the Graces walking the countryside, with birds and animals gazing adoringly at them and fl
owers blooming in their footsteps; it formed a bizarre counterpoint to the grisly relics of battle around us. With my head pounding and my body still exhausted from the aftermath of the poison, I could only stare.
Soon the road swung away from the Kazerath border, however, and we gained a reprieve from such macabre warnings. We broke out of the forest into a farm village, the open fields wide and white with snow around us. Most of the houses stood in a rough square around the village green; their weathered gray boards and peaked slate roofs were more practical than pretty, but they seemed in good repair, and cheery smoke rose from their chimneys. The green itself stood clear of snow, and a handful of goats nibbled surprisingly lush grass at one end, while at the other a fence kept the goats mostly out of a garden plot growing decidedly out-of-season vegetables, no doubt thanks to their local vivomancer.
We had barely reached the edge of the village square when a pair of dogs came charging out to meet us, barking with great excitement, tails wagging madly. The wild animals who’d followed Kathe dispersed in a huff, and he crouched down, laughing, to greet the dogs, who wriggled with ecstasy at his attention. Not far behind them came a small pack of children, shouting with nearly as much excitement, and doors opened all over the village as the adults came out to see what was happening.
“Lord Kathe! Lord Kathe! My cat had kittens!” one little girl squealed, with evident conviction that he would find this news of utmost importance.
“Lord Kathe! Will you grow cherries for us?” a boy pleaded.
“Will you do your trick with the crows?”
“Did more soldiers from Kazerath come, Lord Kathe? Did you kill them all?”
“Are you staying overnight? You can sleep in my bed! I’ll sleep on the floor, I don’t mind!”
Kathe laughed and answered each of them as he could, still crouched down from greeting the dogs, reaching out to ruffle hair and pat shoulders. “I know! Six healthy kittens! Their mama should be proud. No soldiers this time, Rika, I’m happy to say. Cherries… let’s see…” Kathe snapped his fingers, and in the yard of a house across the square behind him, one bough of a tree burst suddenly into bloom. Flowers blossomed and dropped in an instant, fluttering down like pink snow, and the branch bent under the rapidly growing weight of plump red cherries.
The children shrieked with glee and raced off toward it; Kathe straightened, calling after them, “Now, don’t eat so much you get sick, or your parents will be angry with me!”
I exchanged glances with Zaira as we climbed down out of the sleigh. First the bones, now this… But it all made a strange sort of sense. He would do anything for his domain. It was all a part of him, pumping through his heart with his blood: the children, the dogs, the ancient tree he’d pointed out to me. Ruven thought of the lives in his domain as power that was his to spend; to Kathe, these were his children, for whom he would equally perform the sweet miracle of cherries in winter or rip those who would threaten them to pieces and decorate the forest with their skulls.
The village adults approached next, more deferential than their offspring, greeting Kathe with deep bows.
“Lord Kathe,” an old woman with a blacksmith’s brawny arms and burned leather apron greeted him. “I hope they weren’t bothering you.”
“Not at all,” Kathe said. “We’re only passing through today, but I’m always glad to stop and say hello.”
While Zaira and I hung awkwardly behind him, nearly the same scene unfolded as had with the children, except the adults’ questions and requests were somewhat more serious. Should they expect any more attacks near the village? They’d heard rumors he’d be levying an army, was it true? The red cow had taken sick again and the local Greenwitch couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, could he take a look?
Kathe assured them that Ruven’s attention was turned south and he could keep the border safe without needing an army. He closed his eyes for a moment before announcing that the red cow had been eating baneleaf, and he’d cured her of the poison and given her some resistance to it, but they’d want to pull it up where it grew in the west pasture so that no other livestock fell afoul of it.
“We’re going to be here all day,” Zaira muttered to me. “Look at him. He can’t say no.”
I opened my mouth to protest that Kathe had said himself we were just passing through, and surely in a moment we would move on, but then I saw his face. He was deep in a serious discussion of baneleaf with one of the farmers gathered around him, now, their breaths making a cloud of mingled steam in the winter air around them.
This could not be more unlike Ruven’s domain of Kazerath, where the people had made warding signs against evil whenever they spoke of him and had hand-shaped burn marks on their faces. And it wasn’t much like Atruin, either, where the people were happy and safe but treated their Witch Lord with distant and reverent awe, as if she were the Grace of Majesty or the great and terrible sun itself.
It occurred to me with a sudden, deep pang that he reminded me most of Marcello, and the careful attention he gave to the concerns of every Falcon in the Mews.
I hugged my coat closer around me against the cold. “Perhaps I should give him a gentle reminder of the urgency of our errand,” I murmured.
At that moment, the sounds of hooves thudding in snow and jingling harness broke through the conversation. From across the square, a great voice bellowed, “Thought you could just slip past the border without us noticing, eh?”
Everyone looked up in surprise except Kathe, who instead turned slowly around, grinning widely. “I shouldn’t have to tell you where I am,” he called. “A good Heartguard simply knows.”
Three newcomers rode into the square, and it took only a casual glance to see they were no farmers. They carried themselves with the dangerous assurance of warriors, and grinned at Kathe like old friends.
“May I introduce three of my Heartguard?” Kathe gestured grandly as they approached. “Verin, whose family has served in the Heartguard for three generations.” The woman who bowed from her saddle in acknowledgment was lean and long as a hunting knife, with deep golden-brown skin and short dark hair ruffed up like a hawk’s feathers. “Hal, who used to get me into trouble when I was small, and keeps me out of trouble now.” The man who’d yelled to Kathe laughed heartily; he sported a great red beard, streaked with gray, and a chest like a wine barrel. He must be in his forties; it was unsettling to think that Kathe was closer to Hal’s age than mine. The years that showed in light creases and general weathering on Hal’s mortal face had passed by Kathe without marking him. “And Glass, whose aim is the only thing sharper than their tongue.” The third, an androgynous youth with pale shoulder-length hair, grinned in greeting as they slouched in a splendidly embroidered emerald-green riding coat, a long musket across their back.
“And my friends,” Kathe concluded, “meet Lady Amalia Cornaro and Lady Zaira the fire warlock.”
The three offered us deep bows, as best they could from horseback. “Lady Amalia! I’ve been dying to meet you ever since our Lord Kathe told us he was courting a Raverran,” Hal boomed, his red brows rising.
“Yes, we were all wondering who he’d found that might be willing to put up with him,” Glass added, their pale eyes scrunching with humor.
“We should get moving,” Verin said, glancing at the afternoon sun. Her hand dropped casually to check the lie of some of the several daggers strapped to her person, as if this were a routine she no longer noticed herself performing. “Your crow said you were in a hurry, my lord.”
“Finally,” Zaira muttered.
“I am,” Kathe said seriously. “It wouldn’t do to keep the Lady of Spiders waiting.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
So, what do you think of our lord?” Hal asked, his gruff voice carrying easily over the thud of hooves and jingle of harness as our sleigh once more hissed along the snowy road. Kathe rode up in front with Verin, who was having some kind of serious conversation with him about Ruven’s troop movements; I wished I co
uld participate, but Hal and Glass had brought their horses up alongside the sleigh, an eager gleam of curiosity in their eyes.
“He’s a good man,” I said, and when Hal’s eyebrows flew up and Glass snorted, I added, “mostly.”
Hal guffawed. “That’s one way to put it.”
“He’s good to us, anyway,” Glass amended. “So you understand, my lady, if we want to verify that he’s not making terrible mistakes with his romantic decisions.”
“It’s our job,” Hal agreed, with an expression of mock piety. “We guard his heart, after all.”
Zaira laughed. “That one? His heart is made of razors. It can damn well guard itself.”
“Now, now, you’ll put us out of a line of work,” Glass said. “So Lady Amalia, we must assure ourselves of your worthiness. Do you have a sense of humor?”
“She must, to tolerate Lord Kathe.” Hal chuckled. “What about your heart? Do you have a good heart, my lady?”
“Well,” I began, realizing with some distress that I was uncertain of the answer.
“But not too good,” Glass cut in. “If you’re a simpering do-gooder, you won’t last long around here.”
“No fear of that,” Zaira said. Despite the lightness of her tone, I couldn’t help a pang at the words.
“Clearly you’ve got courage,” Hal said, “because we don’t see a lot of Raverrans this deep in Vaskandar. I hear you tell each other scary stories about us.”
“Maybe it’s all the bones,” Zaira suggested, with a great pretense of seriousness.
Glass cocked their head in a way that reminded me of Kathe. “I’d never thought of that. Do you think they discourage visitors?”
I couldn’t tell if they were throwing Zaira’s irony right back at her. Before I could try to formulate some kind of response, Kathe dropped back to join us, shaking a finger at his Heartguard.
“Are you two interrogating the Lady Amalia? She’s not a prisoner, you know.”
The Unbound Empire Page 37
