by Tammy Salyer
She considered his suggestion. Eisa had known pain in her life. No child of Lœdyrrak, and particularly not a child of the Sixth Line, grew up without experiencing the hardships and depravations of moving through the five Phases that made one worthy. But the pain she now suffered at Lillias’s betrayal cut into her heart in ways nothing ever had. Not even close. She felt sick, poisoned from within, and recognized she had brought it on herself. She’d regressed on the Third Phase and grown attached to another person, a commoner no less, instead of her maker. It was a mistake she vowed to herself to rectify before Halla rose again.
“I will return after I see to her,” she had rasped, and Roi and Griggory did not need to ask who.
They couldn’t stop her. Perhaps they didn’t try because they pitied her. As her fellow Knights, they went with her, leaving the Lœdyrraks safely hidden and barred in the Fenestros hall.
They’d found Lillias with a collection of the conspirators in a secret room of an inn built along the city wall, an establishment Eisa had frequented with the Yorish traitor. Eisa hadn’t known about the room or the hidden passage that led to it, but she’d used her powers of persuasion, mainly the threat of shoving a burning candlestick into the innkeeper’s eye, to wrench Lillias’s location from him.
With the innkeeper bound and gagged to prevent him from warning the blaggards, she lit the passageway with her Mentalios, Roi and Griggory following soundlessly. On reaching a wooden door, she listened with held breath. Muffled voices, one of which she knew too well, came through it. Without consulting the other Knights, Eisa palmed her klinkí stones, kicked the door open, and rushed into the room. There wasn’t time to blink before six men and two woman—Eisa recognized most as other acolytes—were dead. Only one remained alive. Lillias.
Wrapping the woman in a net of klinkí stones smeared with gore, Eisa croaked the only word that remained to her in her rage: “Betrayer.”
Lillias blinked, then managed a sneer, the look of a woman who knew her fate was sealed and felt no shame in the reasons for it. “I am the betrayer? Hah. People of Lœdyrrak, your homeland, attacked my Arch Keeper, killed him. And you, obviously part of the scheme, killed acolytes of the Conservatum! Who is the betrayer here, Eisa?”
“Slag your lies, Lillias! I’ve read your letters. Every word you just said is false.” She flashed back on the last dozen thirty-nights she’d spent with Lillias, all the gentle compliments she’d given Eisa, her sweet speeches and flattery. Had any of it been real? “Every word,” she repeated.
“Are they? The evidence is everywhere. The Lœdyrrak ambassador’s own knife is in Connaugh’s belly, and witnesses heard the fight.” She paused, staring at Eisa coldly, then seemed to realize she’d be unable to lie her way out of Eisa’s fury. “You may have killed everyone here, Eisa, but did you think it was just us? We’ve been trying for so long to get you and your Order to make Yor the seat of Vaka Aster’s reign. If you’d listened to us, to me, this could have been avoided. Yor doesn’t bow to you, Eisa, your Order, or to any kingdom. Yor has stood aside too long while Ivoryss pretends it’s Vaka Aster’s chosen, holding the vessel hostage like some kind of prize. And you Lœdyrraks, ha! Pretending your devotion is pure. Zealots! If Vaka Aster favors the Lœdyrraks so much, why has she never stepped foot in your lands?”
Eisa had never felt such a lust for someone’s blood. She had every reason she needed to kill the woman, the blasphemer who didn’t even know that Vaka Aster’s vessel was Eisa’s own ancestor. She loosened the cage of klinkí stones enough for Lillias to pass through, inviting the woman to attack her. Wanting to make her suffer when she did.
Lillias stayed in place, and her expression softened. “Perhaps, it isn’t too late, my love,” she said, her voice no longer shrill but low and pleading. “Connaugh was a spineless, unambitious leader and unwilling to demand…”
Eisa wasn’t listening to her, the pounding blood wrath in her ears drowning everything out. Then Roi spoke to her through the Mentalios, breaking through the beating pulse.
We need her alive, Eisa. The letters will prove Dyrrakium’s innocence, and justice will be served, but keeping her alive will help ensure it. The Yorish court will need her to identify the other conspirators, as well.
Lillias was still speaking, the plea in her tone sounding nearly genuine. “And with Vaka Aster’s sanctuary here, the Knights must relocate to Yor as well. Their longevity and strength can benefit Yor, too. If you persuade them to come, it will be enough to show where your fealty truly lies.”
“Truly,” Eisa said, “lies are all you’re capable of, Lillias. The Knights’ fealty is not a bargaining chip for fickle commoners to play with. Our duty is not to weak-minded chookters like you without loyalty or faith.” She flicked her wrist and pulled back her stones, then said over her shoulder to Roibeard and Griggory, who stood in the doorway, “Wait outside.”
“Eisa, what—” Griggory started.
“Wait outside,” she said again, louder, her eyes holding Lillias’s.
They went. When the door thunked shut against the jamb, Eisa pocketed her klinkí stones, all but one. She dropped her gaze to it and whispered an incantation. As she did, she felt the pull from within her, a wave of her celestial spark being sucked into the stone she held. It began to glow stronger, Halla bright, and Eisa’s legs grew shaky.
Lillias backed away from her until her thighs smacked against the table in the center of the room. “What are you going to do to—”
Before the question ended, Eisa flung the stone, shooting-star fast, toward Lillias’s chest, hitting her dead center in her heart. Lillias made a guttural noise and fell backward onto the tabletop, her hands coming up to grab her chest. Eisa stepped up to her, feeling nothing, her entire body a numb thing. The wound wasn’t bleeding, and the stone remained luminous. It would hold that bit of spark, bit of Eisa, forever, or until Eisa drew it back. It wasn’t until after the carnage she wrought in Himmingaze that she’d replaced the klinkí stone with the Fenestros shard and given the revenant she’d made of Lillias in service to Lœdyrrak.
“I know you wanted your name spoken in the halls of eternity as a ruler of Yor, commoner, but I’m going to give you something better. I’m going to make you eternal. You will not die while my stone remains in your breast, tethering your spirit to this unworthy body.” Her mouth was drier than the deserts of Lœdyrrak as she looked down into her former lover’s terrified, agonized face and watched her try to speak. She put her hand over Lillias’s mouth. “No, you’ve said and done enough. From here forward, the only words you say will be mine. I’m going to teach you what even the Conservatum failed to. I’m going to teach you what it means to be worthy.”
A sound came from outside, the rattle of metal and rustle of cloth. Roibeard and Griggory would come to check on her in moments. She didn’t want them to see this. When Lillias choked and her eyes glazed over, Eisa stepped into the passageway, swinging the door shut behind her. She’d come back for Lillias’s body later, alone.
“Eisa?” Roi said.
Repeating his words, Eisa assured them, “She’s no more threat to us.”
At that moment, she’d decided: Lœdyrrak was the only nation who truly put Vaka Aster before their own greed and selfish interests. She’d persuade them to cut themselves off permanently from these lesser kingdoms. And when she could, she’d take Lillias’s undead body back there, enshrined in the dankness below the citadel forever to remind Eisa, and remind Lœdyrrak, what frailty they had escaped from. To remind them never to let themselves fall as low.
Blinking away the memory, Eisa finally looked into the shining eyes of the one she’d made the Speaker. There was no life behind them, but they gleamed as if there were. “You poor, common girl,” Eisa said. “Your worst crime was to believe that true power came from rule instead of devotion and faith in our maker. But I see now it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t have a chance. Perhaps if you’d seen Vaka Aster in those days, in her radiance, you could have been saved.”
She brushed the back of her hand against the Yorwoman’s cheek, marveling as she used to at the way the rich red-brown of her darker skin contrasted with the pale Yorish coloring. She’d loved how Lillias’s freckles matched her own hue, and how the white skin of Eisa’s many battle scars was the same as Lillias’s skin coloring, the way lind tree fruit was the same color as the petals of a dalla flower. She’d imagined they were two parts of one whole, a union like Halla and its moon, or a hero and her enemy.
But now, looking at Lillias, Eisa saw she was not her enemy and hadn’t been in centuries. The broken woman was as empty and spent as Vaka Aster’s abandoned vessel. Which meant Eisa was, as she’d always been, whole on her own, not contingent on being one part of a union. A Knight didn’t have that luxury, and it was time to let that fantasy die with Lillias.
She backed a step away and raised a hand as if to pick a kórb from a branch. In a low voice, she called her klinkí stones from her bandolier and sent them forward. They attached to the Fenestros shard like magnets. With a gentle pull, she willed them back to her.
Lillias’s body was jerked to its feet and staggered toward her, the stone so embedded it wouldn’t break free. The revenant pitched into Eisa, who wrapped her free arm around Lillias’s waist to hold her up. Her raised hand was pressed between them, directly over Lillias’s missing heart. She could feel the heat of the Fenestros. Lillias’s head fell into her shoulder, and Eisa’s breath caught short at the scent of her hair. It was the same as it had been so long ago, a scent as fresh as Halla-warmed honey and cherries. A scent that was so lovely she’d dreamed of it ever since.
With eyes that burned with unshed tears, Eisa whispered into Lillias’s curls, “I’m so sorry, my love. You can be free now. I’m so sorry.”
Then, without warning, the Fenestros shard let go and fell into Eisa’s grasp. Lillias’s body collapsed against her, the residual life inside that had once animated her gone to forever death.
Eisa let her klinkí stones clatter to the ground but held the Fenestros shard. Gently, she draped Lillias over the chair, feeling suddenly brittle, as if the strike of a feather would shatter her.
Just a moment, she thought. I’ll just rest for a moment. My duty can wait for a singular suffering moment.
She laid the shard in Lillias’s palm and placed it upside down on her lap, then pressed her back up against the wall opposite the dead Speaker’s chair and slid down until she was sitting on the floor. Her eyes closed, burning behind the lids with tears she would never be able to shed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ulfric took one last look at the Himmingazians resting peacefully before nodding to Mallich and leaving for his chamber once more. None stirred in discomfort or unrest. They were, at least for now, out of the woods.
And he was, at least for now, comforted. If through the wystic gifts of Knighthood he could share some of the spark in him to salve their illness, Symvalline could too. Crumb would be safe for a while. If, indeed, there was safety to be found in Arc Rheunos.
He glanced outside, noting Halla’s slow climb to midday. Opening the starpath well would draw the attention of the Dyrrak people when Jaemus was ready to go, but the Knights would reassure them. They could inform the people of Dyrrakium before sending Jaemus home, which inadvertently showed him that there was some freedom in being thought of as a Verity. Everything he or the Knights did would be accepted without question or confrontation.
His frustration with Eisa notwithstanding, it wouldn’t be long now before he sent Safran and Stave to Arc Rheunos. To do what he could not do. He had no doubts in his fellow Knights. Stave, for all his bluster, had an uncanny combat astuteness and indomitability that could defeat an army. And Safran, thorough, clearheaded, and precise, had been an unexpected boon to the Knights when she’d joined as well. And both had an unwavering devotion to duty. No two Knights were better suited to travel into an unknown realm together than Safran and Stave, and if there was any chance at all Symvalline and Isemay were still within hope of aid, they would see it done.
He and Mallich reached his chamber, where the lone guard remained at his post. Forgetting himself, Ulfric nodded to acknowledge the guard as he would have done any attendant. Then he realized the folly in that. Would a Verity show such familiarity, even a sense of companionship to one of its creations?
The guard blinked once, then knelt with his head bowed. “Great Creator.”
“Venerate,” he said, “have refreshments brought, whatever you think will please the Knights. And also a pitcher of that Dyrrakium liquor.” Ulfric couldn’t remember its name, but he couldn’t very well admit this to the guard. Despite, or perhaps because of, how his current predicament enhanced his senses, he found the traditional Dyrrak beverage delicious.
“Syke liquor, Great Creator?”
“Yes.”
“It is done, Great Creator.”
The venerate remained kneeling until Ulfric began to pass into his chamber. He was not going to get used to that. He turned back, “And, Venerate, kneeling is unnecessary from here forward.” He and Mallich passed through the doorway before the guard had a chance to respond.
Safran stood at the window, looking out over the city.
“Safran,” Ulfric said, “has Stave said anything?”
She spun around, and her eyes were alight with many hues. Not yet. But the bruhawks have shown me something curious.
“What did they see?”
It seems the entire city is amassing at the citadel. There are thousands coming here for some reason.
Mallich ventured, “Do you think it’s to see Vaka Aster?”
It could be. Perhaps the Ecclesium has planned another event. Has he said anything to you, Ulfric?
He shook his head, troubled. If worse came to worst, the interrealm well away from Dyrrakium was in the citadel—though he’d let slip his mind the need to locate it. They could escape back to Mount Omina if needed. Or use Vaka Aster’s Scrylle to travel the starpaths. But he was so sick of running.
They were interrupted by the sound of a metal knocker on the wood of the chamber’s door. “It’s me,” Stave yelled.
Mallich unbolted the door, and Stave hurried in, already speaking. “Believe you me, you may think you’ve heard everything our deranged Dyrrak companion is capable of, but I have something new for you that’ll test even the hardiest imagination, it will.”
“What is it, Stave?” Ulfric said, intrigued.
“She’s challenged that Ecclesium fanatic to a takeover, a power play. Eisa plans to rule Dyrrakium.”
No words existed in any tongue Ulfric had ever heard to express his shock. Finally, he found his voice. “Why in all the worlds…where did you hear this from?”
“Chancellor Aoggvír. She seems a mite distressed by the whole thing, but she’s been running around since last night, apparently, getting arrangements made. They have a ceremonial fight—except I don’t think it’s a pretty tip-tap, pit-pat, on-your-way kind of fight. I think it’s to the death. The Concubineum Ecclesium or some such.”
Conquestum Ecclesium, Safran put in. You never paid much attention to the studies of cultures at the Conservatum, love. She looked to Ulfric, her eyes clearing to their natural dark as she dismissed the bruhawk link. This is…unprecedented. But it could likewise be advantageous.
“Not if she loses, it won’t be,” Stave mused.
“But that’s impossible,” Ulfric said. “The Ecclesium must know she is a hundred times stronger and more resilient than him. Her Verity spark will make her unstoppable. Why would he agree to this?”
“Way I heard it, there wasn’t a choice. If the challenge is made, it has to be faced. Even if he simply stepped down and let her take the throne, he’d lose everything, become a servant to the Dyrraks instead of a member of the citizenry. It’s about honor, or what the Dyrraks think honor is.” Stave leaned toward Safran as he finished. “I paid attention the day they taught that. And that Ecclesium doesn’t strike me as the
type who’d shirk a fight, he doesn’t,” he finished, addressing them all.
Another knock sounded. “It’s the venerate bringing drinks,” Ulfric said.
Stave paced to the door and pulled aside the cover of a small peering portal. He turned back.
“The Ecclesium.”
“Alone?” Ulfric asked.
Stave nodded and Ulfric took a moment to compose himself. “Knights, as much as I wish it were not so, we can’t have anyone leaving for Arc Rheunos until this matter with Eisa is settled.”
They nodded, but their faces showed they were as much troubled about the decision as him.
He looked toward the raised platform on which the Verity’s throne sat but decided against taking it. He didn’t want to look down on people he was speaking with. Playing this role had already grown tiresome. He put his back to the platform and gestured for Stave to open the door.
The tall head Dyrrak paced toward Ulfric, showing unceasing deference by keeping his head bowed, never making eye contact. The three Knights arrayed themselves around Ulfric in a protective circle, and the Ecclesium stopped a few paces short. He carried a tray of assorted fruits, a pitcher, and several ceramic mugs, which he laid on a nearby table.
Turning toward Ulfric, he said, “Great Creator, it is my hope you’ve found this humble hall satisfactory. I’ve come to inquire if there is anything else your servants can do to fulfill your expectations. I have many services and celebrations planned—”
“No,” Ulfric cut in. “I have no wish for those.” He cringed inwardly at the idea of being treated as anyone’s spectacle of worship.
The Ecclesium remained awkwardly silent for a few moments, then said, “Surely the Vigil Star wishes to shine for his most faithful people.”
“They have seen me, Ecclesium. They know I am here.” He had to think about what to say. “The people of Dyrrakium will ever have my blessing for keeping their faith as strong as they have, even through an unjust exile that you did not seek.” He plunged forward with the subject on all their minds. “But I’ve heard what’s to come this afternoon at High Halls.”
