The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  Chapter Forty

  Even the grass around Ruven’s blooding stone was sick.

  The waist-high pillar of ancient stone perched at the peak of a rocky spit that jutted out into a still, deep lake. No snow had settled on or around the rune-carved stone, despite the pristine white that blanketed the woods and the scab of gray ice across the water. But any warmth the presence of magic lent to the scrabble of earth clinging to the near-island on which the stone stood did the plants huddled on it little good. The grass was withered and yellow, the trees stunted and twisted.

  A shallow basin carved into the top of the blooding stone bore old black stains that trailed down a granite channel to vanish beneath the ice-skimmed water. Ruven’s blood, and his father’s before him. The river that fed this lake came from Let, bearing the leftover dregs of Kathe’s claim across the nearby border; but the streams that flowed from it carried Ruven’s blood, to spread his claim throughout Kazerath.

  Magic lay thick and heavy in the air, pressing down on me like the low steely clouds in the sky above. Zaira and I stood shoulder to shoulder, not quite leaning on each other. I could tell that with everything that had happened, her legs were as unsteady as mine.

  I gripped the hilt of my dagger, still sheathed at my hip. “Should I do this now?”

  Kathe scanned the trees, poised with the still readiness of an animal preparing to bolt or to pounce. “We need to place the Truce Stones in a circle in the woods first. This outcrop is too small; if we set up the trap here, he could kill you without ever stepping onto it. Glass and Verin, come with me, and we’ll hide them in a ring around the lake. Lady Amalia, I’ll send you a crow when we’re ready, and you can proceed.”

  Hal had already dripped a few drops of blood into the receptacle of each of the borrowed Truce Stones, and I had poured in a bit of Ruven’s potion. Zaira had chipped off flakes of dried stuff from the blooding stone with her knife to add to the mix, just to make sure it was enough. In theory, anyone whose blood mixed in the Truce Stones was bound against harming each other within their ring; if someone broke the truce, their blood would turn against them. From what I’d seen when Kathe killed the Lady of Thorns, this was agonizing and debilitating—but most important of all, it temporarily cut off a Witch Lord from their blood link to their own domain.

  “I hope this works,” I fretted, as Kathe, Verin, and Glass gathered up the stones that would mark the perimeter of the enchantment. Zaira had already hidden the center stone among some rocks a few paces away. “I can’t think of any reason the blood should have to be fresh, but this isn’t my area of particular expertise.”

  “If it doesn’t, I’ll buy time for everyone to escape,” Kathe said grimly. “I don’t stand a chance of defeating Ruven here, in his own domain, but I can probably delay him enough for you to reach the border.”

  “I don’t like where that leaves you, my lord,” Verin said, frowning.

  Kathe shrugged. “If Witch Lords were easy to kill, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “I’ll guard his back,” Glass told Verin, patting their musket.

  “That’s not your job,” Kathe said sternly. “You guard my heart. And for that, I need to know that at least some of us will leave here alive. Once we place the Truce Stones, you two go back across the border into Let and wait for us there.”

  Glass straightened from their habitual slouch. “Bury that. My lord, I’m not going slinking back to Let like some whipped dog. Let us stay and fight.”

  “Our place is with you, my lord,” Verin agreed.

  “Bah,” Hal scoffed. “If you stay, you’ll just get killed.” I winced. He could have been less callous about it, though I suspected he wasn’t wrong. Ruven would see them as Kathe’s point of weakness, and target them.

  “What about you, then?” Glass lifted their eyebrows. “I suppose you’ll be sipping beer the whole time, delivering witty commentary about the battle?”

  “Hal will be injured and possibly dying,” Kathe said sharply. “Which is why I need you waiting across the border with a physician, Glass. This is an order.”

  Glass bowed their head, lips pressed tight. After a moment, they managed, “Yes, my lord.”

  “You, too, Verin. You’ve got a son. I’m not telling him I took his mother into Kazerath and got her killed.”

  Verin sighed. “Yes, my lord. But if you need help, I’m coming back for you.”

  “If I need help, you’re better off evacuating the border towns.” Kathe took my hand, then, and lifted it to his lips. Electricity shivered through my fingers. “Good luck, Lady Amalia. I’ll be waiting in hiding, ready to help when you need it.”

  He, Verin, and Glass headed back along the natural causeway to shore, then broke up and disappeared into the forest. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of worry for them. These were Ruven’s woods; his presence breathed from every tree, stirring the branches of the restless pines. The few birds that watched from their stark branches were his, and the limp grass beneath our feet. At any moment, if Ruven figured out what we were up to, the land itself could try to murder us.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Hal.

  He patted his sword hilt and shrugged. “When he approaches us, I’ll step in to guard you. He’ll have to get past me to blood the stone again and wipe out your claim. If for any reason he doesn’t attack, I’ll bellow a lot and swing this around and generally menace him until he comes at me.”

  “He won’t hold back.” I held his bright blue eyes. “There’s a good chance he’ll kill you.”

  “I know that,” he grunted. “I always figured I’d die in battle. I can’t think of a better way than protecting my home from a monster like the Skin Lord.”

  I had to get used to this, somehow. Sending people to their possible deaths was now part of my job. But still, my throat tightened, and I could only nod and whisper, “Thank you.”

  I turned to Zaira, who still seemed somewhat paler than usual; the sweat hadn’t had time to dry from her temples. Aelie’s bite showed red and swollen on the back of her hand.

  “How about you? Are you ready?”

  Zaira let out a harsh bark of a laugh. “My part is to set Ruven’s face on fire. I’ve been ready for this for months.”

  I tried an experimental and rather tentative punch of her shoulder. She punched mine back, hard enough to leave a bruise.

  “All right, then,” I said, wincing. “Exsolvo.”

  Zaira took in a shuddery breath. “I’m trusting you to bring me back again, Cornaro.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you?” Zaira asked. “Are you ready to pee on Ruven’s tree?”

  “My part is the easiest of all.” I tried out a smile, though I wasn’t entirely sure it fit. “All I have to do is bleed, and then possibly bluff like mad if things don’t go as expected. Both of which are areas in which I’ve amassed a certain amount of practice.”

  It wasn’t long before a crow fluttered down to land on the twisted, dying branch of a nearby stunted tree. It cawed at me urgently, then took off again.

  “That’s the signal.” I drew my dagger and stepped forward to the blooding stone.

  I didn’t have nearly as strong a connection to the land here as I’d had in Atruin. There, the Lady of Eagles was the only and true master of the domain, having claimed it with her own blood for hundreds of years. Here her claim was secondary to Ruven’s, her magic flowing up the rivers and streams of Vaskandar to insinuate its way into land claimed by another. But still, when I touched the rim of rough ancient rock, I could feel a pulse in the earth beneath my feet. Ruven’s heartbeat. This was his blood. This was his bone.

  I drew my dagger across the back of my arm, wincing at the pain. It was hard to make the cut, with every instinct rebelling against it, and I only managed a shallow slice. But red beads welled up along it, and I held my stinging arm over the basin and squeezed.

  The first drop fell, shining crimson. The moment it hit the stone, everything changed.

/>   The whispering trees stilled. I had their absolute attention. Birds rose up from the forest around us, crying in consternation. I became precisely, acutely aware of each blade of grass around me, sickened and dying as Ruven pulled more from his domain than he gave back; the lives closest to the source of his power were most harshly affected by his reckless greed. I could feel the tormented straining of the branches within reach, and how they held their breath, waiting to see if someone would truly challenge their master. I had a vague sense of the lake, deeper than it looked, its bottom lost in inky darkness. Cold fish moved sluggishly there beneath the ice. I could feel the snow-locked ground, and the waiting spring sleeping within it, biding its time.

  I couldn’t touch any of it, as I might have if I were a vivomancer. And my awareness didn’t stretch even to the far shore. But the land thrummed in my mind, tense as a plucked harp string.

  Another drop of blood fell, and another. Barely enough to trickle toward the mouth of the channel that led down to the lake. But it was enough. I was forming a connection; one I couldn’t use, but the Lady of Eagles might, if she chose.

  Ruven’s attention fell on me like a burning building. He knew.

  And he was coming.

  “Get ready,” I gasped. “He’s close.”

  Hal drew his sword and stepped forward. “How long?”

  “Not long. He’s almost—”

  A gunshot shattered the wintry stillness of the air, cracking across the sky like thunder.

  Hal staggered and fell, blood blooming on his barrel chest.

  “Hal!” I cried, abandoning the blooding stone to rush toward him. But though he still moved feebly against the rocks and the dying grass, I knew in the sick twisting of my gut that it was too late.

  At the far end of the rocky spit, where it met the shore, Marcello and Ruven stood side by side, the snow-dusted forest rearing up behind them. Smoke still rose from Marcello’s pistol. A light breeze stirred the collar of Ruven’s long dark coat, lifting strands of his ponytail to mingle with the winter air.

  “That was a very good try, Lady Amalia Cornaro,” Ruven called. “It might have worked, if I hadn’t happened to notice this Truce Stone.”

  He took one from behind his back, where his hands had been folded, showing me its bloodstained crown with a sharp grin. Then he threw it in the lake. It crunched through the thin ice, leaving a black, rippling hole as the water swallowed it.

  At my feet, Hal gave a short, wet gasp and went still.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ripples of horror spread through my chest, cold and dark as the lake that trapped us here. I couldn’t comprehend how so much had been destroyed in a few fleeting seconds: Hal dead, the circle of Truce Stones broken, and us left at Ruven’s mercy in his own domain. Surely, I could turn back time, somehow, and try again. This couldn’t have gone so terribly, irrevocably wrong.

  “Hells take it,” Zaira breathed, flexing her fingers at her sides.

  From a patch of trees along the shoreline, a flock of crows burst skyward, cawing.

  Kathe stepped out of the woods, his black feathered cloak mantling behind him like the bristling hackles of some furious beast. He paced toward Ruven, head down, deadly intent in the line of his shoulders. The bone knife he’d used to kill the Lady of Thorns gleamed in his hand, unsheathed and ready at his side.

  Ruven turned with slow menace to face him.

  “Are you truly so mad as to challenge me here, in my own domain, Crow Lord?” he asked incredulously.

  “At this moment, I am precisely that mad.” The lethal intensity of Kathe’s voice struck a chill through me. “You killed my friend.”

  Zaira’s hand fell on my shoulder. “Do we run, or do I try to burn him?” she whispered.

  I shook my head. Marcello was reloading his pistol, still staring straight at us. The impossibility of our situation sat in my stomach like a gulp of icy lake water. “We already know your balefire alone isn’t enough. And they’re blocking the only way out. We have to hope Kathe can give us a chance somehow.” I gripped my flare locket in one hand and my bloody dagger in the other.

  Ruven smiled at Kathe, baring shining teeth. “Let’s see if I can kill you, too.”

  A roaring groan shook the trees along the bank. Branches stabbed at Kathe like spears, lethally fast and sharp, one after another. Within two heartbeats, dozens of them clawed at him from every angle.

  But Kathe ducked and dodged with careless grace as he continued his relentless advance on Ruven. He flicked his head barely out of the way of one deadly lance, then lifted his knife to shear through another as if it were clay before it could touch him.

  One tore the sleeve of his gray tunic as he twisted aside. Another struck the feathered mantle of his cloak and rebounded as if it were impenetrable armor. He blocked yet another with his bone knife, and the branch shattered like glass. He couldn’t turn Ruven’s domain against him, but he could still use the pieces of his own domain he’d brought with him. I hardly dared breathe—he was unstoppable. He was going to make it.

  Ruven frowned and backed a step, then another, but not enough. Kathe lunged between two grasping tree-talons, cloak flying, and was upon him.

  He stabbed at Ruven’s face, once, twice. Ruven screamed, staggering back, his hands flying up to cover the bloody ruin of his eyes.

  “Serves the bastard right,” Zaira said, awe in her voice.

  Kathe struck a third time, burying his bone knife in Ruven’s chest, punching through his sternum as if it were a loaf of soft bread. But I could see even from here the desperation straining his eyes.

  Not enough. Graces help us, he didn’t think this was nearly enough.

  Ruven’s pain-clawed hands relaxed. He wiped the blood away from his face, revealing fresh new eyes, the violet mage mark in them blazing with anger.

  “You’ll pay for that,” he said, ignoring the knife hilt sticking from his chest. He grabbed at Kathe, who leaped back out of his range. Kathe flashed Ruven a sharp taunting smile, but fear for him tightened a band around my lungs.

  “You are nothing but a nuisance,” Ruven spat. “But you are a nuisance for which I have prepared. You should have stayed in Let.”

  From the woods, three chimeras paced, like horses crossed with serpents. Their snakelike heads bore flaring hoods, and they hissed with fangs bared; reptilian tails lashed the air, and scales covered their long lean bodies and powerful legs. Kathe faced them warily, his hands bare and empty.

  Zaira tugged at my sleeve. “We need to do something about him.”

  I tore my eyes reluctantly from the battle of the Witch Lords to find Marcello advancing up the causeway, pistol in one hand, rapier in the other. The determined furrows in his brow were achingly familiar, but his orange eye stared with inhuman ferocity. The breeze stirred the black waves of his hair, lifting it from the collar of his tattered, bloodstained uniform.

  He moved smoothly, and the hole in his scarlet doublet was the only sign of the wound to his shoulder from last night. Ruven must have healed him. Relief and consternation mixed queasily in my stomach.

  “I don’t have any way to take him down without hurting him.” The flare locket I gripped for reassurance would do little in the bright daylight, a distraction at best. I’d used up Istrella’s last ring, and my satchel was empty of magical surprises.

  “Then we’ll have to hurt him,” Zaira said grimly.

  On the shore, all three chimeras leaped at Kathe at once. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe.

  Kathe tossed his cloak over the head of the first one; it screamed as if the feathers had become knives, and blood ran down its sides as it collapsed. He ducked quickly past another, using its body to shield him from the third. He laid one hand on its neck as he went by, as if to push it away from him; it let out a screech and collapsed. He must have stopped its heart, just as Ruven could do to humans.

  One left. He could handle this. The pressure in my chest eased slightly.

  The third chim
era circled and lunged at Kathe again. But as he braced himself to meet it, a root thick as my arm and sharpened to a stiletto point lanced up from the ground behind him. It struck him in the back, spearing through him.

  “Kathe!” I screamed. But it was too late.

  The blood-streaked tip of the spike protruded from his lower chest. Kathe staggered, staring down at it, caught.

  Something yanked my arm, and I realized I had started down the causeway toward him. Zaira’s fingers dug into my skin.

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” she hissed, pulling me back. I shook my head, throat aching too much to speak.

  Kathe touched the impaling root with a trembling hand, and it crumbled instantly to dry powder. He wove on his feet, blood still spreading alarmingly across his tunic, as the remaining chimera lunged at him.

  He flung up an arm to ward it off, and the chimera sank its serpentine fangs into it. For a moment it froze like that, teeth buried in Kathe’s arm, eyes gone suddenly glassy; then it slid to the ground, dead as its compatriot.

  Kathe fell to his knees, clutching his arm.

  “What is this?” he demanded, his voice hoarse. The fear in it sent a sliver of frost through the core of me.

  “A venom my father developed in his spare time, in case he had to defend his domain against his fellow Witch Lords.” Ruven plucked Kathe’s dagger from his chest, casual as pulling a splinter, and began to clean his nails with it. “It would kill a mortal a thousand times over. It won’t kill you, alas, but it should stop your heart and your breath for a time, and make it quite impossible for you to move.”

  “Leave him alone,” I shouted, shaking my arm free of Zaira and starting forward. But Marcello stood between me and the causeway, his human eye brimming with anguish, his pistol leveled at my chest.

  “I can’t let you interfere, Amalia,” he said.

  Kathe slumped over, clutching his arm to his bloody chest. “You…” he began, but he couldn’t seem to finish.