Bloodtraitor

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “Malachi.”

  I woke, shivering, in a serpiente cell.

  This prison was quite unlike the one in which my brother had died. It was not even as nice as the one in which I had been born and lived for several years. In fact, it had a decidedly damp smell, and moisture settled into my skin from the dank, musty air. Whatever else one might say about them, at least Midnight’s cells were dry and clean. I doubted this was out of mercy on anyone’s part; Mistress Jeshickah was aware that human diseases spread quickly in poor conditions, and she wanted to maintain her property in good shape.

  “Malachi Obsidian, Lady Misha is ready to speak to you.”

  The voice at the door was Jabari’s. Blinking, I saw that he had two other guards behind him—too many for me to fight past. I would have to face Misha.

  My own sister can’t really want me dead.

  Except she did. It was not healthy to challenge a madwoman’s worldview, or to needle at the heart of that madness. If she had just wanted me out of the way for a while, she wouldn’t have accused me of a crime with a death sentence.

  I rose to my feet, feeling every ache and pain. Someone had hit me after I was down, more than once, but I could walk. Jabari led me, not out, but deeper into the prison.

  Serpiente did not believe in imprisonment as punishment, so this place was rarely used. Occasionally, criminals might spend a few days here while awaiting trial, if it was considered too dangerous to let them out, but the cells were never full…like they were now.

  Hollow-eyed, shocked-looking serpents, some wearing the regalia of the royal guard, watched us pass on our way to the interrogation room. I wondered what crimes they were here for. Speaking up? It seemed that Misha had partly won the crowd through persuasion, but partly won her throne by removing those who would get in her way.

  The interrogation room was normally a little better than the rest of the jail, because it included a vent high in the wall designed to bring fresh air into the room. My heart stopped when I saw Kadee, but then I realized she was alone and unchained. If anyone knew a way out of this place, it was the little half-human serpent who had once lived here.

  Relief was quickly replaced by horror as I realized the room was not nearly as clean and sparse as I recalled it from my brief sojourn when I was twelve, with a table and lamp and a sideboard for water. A spike had been driven into the wall and shackles hung from it. One of the blade-tipped Obsidian staves sat nearby, and the sideboard held not a pitcher of water but a collection of weaponry, some bloodied. Misha did not take care of her toys as well as the trainers did.

  How did I know they were Misha’s?

  I knew. She had brought the brutality home with her. What else did she know how to do anymore, when faced with opposition? The sweet voice of reason was no longer whispering in her ear.

  Jabari regained my attention by shaking me fiercely, clacking my teeth together before I braced myself and focused on him.

  “Where. Is. Hara?” he demanded.

  “Is Misha coming?” I asked.

  He shook his head, sharply, before saying, “Not today, but the guards outside your cell don’t know that. I’ll let you go with Kadee, but only if you answer my question. What happened to my mate?”

  Kadee would have told him already if she thought it was a good idea, so I paused to imagine what would happen next if I replied with the truth.

  I could tell Jabari that Misha and Aaron had conspired to sell Hara. He would get the word out, if he could work quickly enough to keep Misha from stopping him. Hara would become a rallying point, until the people overthrew Misha. She would become a symbol of their revolt. The serpiente would not take up arms against the vampires to prevent starvation, that I believed, but if Misha spread her madness through the people, filled the jails, and practiced a trainer’s art on her chosen few and then they learned Hara was alive…they might go for Midnight. With torches and pitchforks and bows and a few blades, serpents better suited to shepherding or selling handmade jewelry in the market would attack Midnight’s stronghold.

  And they would be slaughtered.

  I dropped my gaze, and put every ounce of power into forcing him to believe me.

  “Hara is dead,” I said. The backlash of agony, the last rattling breath of dying hope, nearly took my voice away. “I didn’t do it. None of us did. It was a stupid accident, in the river.” Was I making any sense? Not really. There were plenty of rivers where plenty of people had met their demise trying to cross, but the heir to the throne would not have been so foolish. It didn’t matter, as long as Jabari believed the key facts long enough for me to get out—Hara was dead, and I didn’t do it. “Misha saw it as an opportunity.” He could and probably would rethink it later; believe me for now!

  Jabari nodded.

  “We need to get out of here,” Kadee said, her gaze shifting nervously between me and Jabari. Hara’s lover felt too strongly about the cobra to be swayed for long even by magic, and I didn’t have the time or imagination to come up with a better lie that he would believe once I was out of sight.

  “How?” I asked Kadee.

  “Change shape, follow me.” She hesitated before saying, “I’m hoping you’re not much bigger than I am. Can you…” She waved a hand vaguely at Jabari.

  I could push at his mind so that he would “see” us go a different direction than we went. Even if his loyalty to Misha was questionable, we did not need a royal guard to know all our secrets.

  Kadee and I both changed shape, and slithered down into what must have been some kind of rodent burrow. Kadee was right that it was a snug fit; if I did not have her assurance that there was a light at the end of this tunnel, I never would have entered it, because it would be impossible to turn around if we hit a dead end.

  We emerged in one of the small, cramped caves that Kadee and Shkei had once extensively explored. I wondered how they had found this particular passage, but put the thought from my head. I didn’t want to think about my brother right then.

  I didn’t want to think about anything at all.

  “I don’t think Misha knows where my camp is,” Kadee explained as she led the way, “but if you could work some of your magic to ensure that, it would help me sleep more easily.”

  “I can do that,” I said as I surveyed the area. The site, a nearly enclosed hollow set between a fallen tangle of scrub and some large boulders, had been well chosen for concealment. Serpiente guards might have walked by this spot even before I added a few enchantments to make it less noticeable.

  We prepared for dinner. Kadee had acquired quality supplies from the palace while those doors had been open to her, and the ground had finally dried enough to allow a fire, so the food was plentiful and delicious, but neither of us was in the mood to appreciate it.

  I finally told her the details of Nathaniel’s plans, and that Vance had gone to speak to the bloodwitches among the Azteka.

  “We lost Aika,” Kadee reported when I was done.

  “What do you mean, lost?” I asked.

  “She told me last night that she trusts Misha more than she trusts Nathaniel. She’s backing the new serpiente royal house. She says she won’t tell Misha about our plan with Nathaniel.”

  What would Misha do if she heard? Would she want to join us? No, she would never be willing to work with Nathaniel, and he had made it clear he didn’t intend to work with her.

  “We have to trust her,” I said. “I can see why she is more comfortable siding with Misha than with a mercenary. I don’t think she would do anything to undermine Nathaniel’s plan, even if she doubts it will amount to anything.”

  “What about us?” Kadee asked.

  “I’ll have to go back to Midnight,” I said, making my decision as I spoke, “to try to convince them to wait to deal with the serpiente until after the fall equinox.” That was the task Nathaniel had charged me with. If I couldn’t do it from within the serpiente palace, I would have to work from the other side. “If Misha and her crew can avoid repercussio
ns from the vampires until then, the serpiente will survive after Midnight falls.”

  “In theory, they aren’t breaking any laws,” Kadee said, “so it should be easy enough to persuade the vampires to…not ignore it, precisely, but allow the serpiente to destroy themselves.” She sighed, and stared into the distance. “While you’re at Midnight, I’ll go to the Shantel. They will know the best way for me to help.” Before I had any chance to agree or disagree, she whispered fiercely, “It feels so wrong to separate this way. You at Midnight, Vance with the Azteka, me with the Shantel. You’re all the family I have left.”

  I took her hand, and her cool fingers clenched around mine.

  “Tomorrow we go our separate ways, but we’re still on the same side,” I assured her. “If we live through this, we will be a family again. Don’t forget that.”

  Don’t forget me, I thought, desperately, because we were each going back to the nations that had once welcomed us. The Azteka would let Vance join them, and if they did, he would have a rank near to that of royalty; he was not trained, but even without the skill to use it, a bloodwitch had holiness in his veins. Kadee had been brought by the Shantel from human land to the serpiente, and they had always kept their arms open to her.

  After Kadee fell asleep next to the flickering fire, I stayed up for a while, just watching her and trying to imagine a world where a fifteen-year-old girl didn’t need to face so much.

  I couldn’t.

  We were so few now. Everyone in my blood-family was gone. Shkei lay in a shallow ditch in Midnight’s land. I would not make the mistake of seeing Misha as my sister again, not when I knew she was willing to make me a scapegoat as soon as I became an inconvenience. Farrell was dead.

  Kadee, Vance, and I were the last of the Obsidian guild.

  A slow fury kindled in me.

  By whatever gods might ever have been, if we were the last of Maeve’s kin, then we would fight every last inch to honor everything the Obsidian guild had ever stood for.

  We were a people who bowed to no master, who chose neither to rule nor to serve, but who would strike as vipers at a tyrant. We would bring down Midnight, and then if need be we would bring down the serpiente royal house, until we could face our own shadows again without guilt, and shame, and fear.

  “JUST GO!” MISHA’S voice cried out, causing several of the Obsidian guild to turn their heads in concern. When they saw that Malachi was with Misha, they turned away again. “Just go and leave me alone,” she whimpered, collapsing in front of the fire and pulling her knees to her chest. “I look at you and you’re like a stranger. I can’t stand it.”

  Malachi stood, speechless. There had always been a bond between them, forged in a white-viper’s power, but that connection had been damaged by abuse, and was now frayed and weak.

  She turned her back and dragged herself into her tent, seeking solitude.

  “Our brother is dead,” he whispered, too quietly for her to hear.

  He needed to get away, before he demanded more from her than she was capable of giving and broke the last threads of love that connected them.

  Maybe Midnight will let me have the body, he thought. A corpse can’t be worth that much to them.

  If nothing else, maybe the Obsidian guild could give Shkei a proper goodbye, with a pyre in the woods and his ashes scattered to the wild winds.

  Malachi was nearly at Midnight proper when he remembered what the trainer had said: I’ll let you dig the grave. Gabriel intended to use Shkei’s body as yet another object lesson for his hawk.

  As the sky darkened and sleet started to fall, making it impossible for even his powerful wings to hold him aloft, he sought refuge in Brina di’Birgetta’s greenhouse.

  —

  Wishful thinking and willful blindness had kept me from anticipating that Misha would betray me. She hadn’t been able to stand the sight of me since she returned from Midnight. Even if I hadn’t stupidly spoken up and argued with her, she would have turned on me eventually. I was too much of a reminder of the past.

  I was still charged with trying to protect the serpiente people, though. By the time I reached Midnight a few minutes before sunrise I had a vague idea of a plan.

  I sought not Nathaniel, but Theron. He did not always spend a lot of time in Midnight, but I hoped that the conflict I had heard of between Midnight and Kendra’s line would have kept him close. If he was still here, I could find a way to drop the information about the serpiente in a way that would lead Midnight’s decision-makers to the conclusion I wanted. After all, he was a mercenary; information was power. I could pretend to be shocked and numbed by my sister’s betrayal, a lost soul seeking comfort.

  I wasn’t fooling anyone, and I was the only one I was having the conversation with. I was shocked. I was numb. I did want comfort.

  I knocked on Theron’s door, and heard him stir inside.

  He opened the door with an amused expression, and said, “Malachi, come in.”

  The door closed behind me, making a dull thunk instead of the usual resounding, nearly resonate click. But perhaps that dullness was in my own mind. Everything seemed muffled.

  “Are you in there, Malachi?” Theron asked, sounding a bit less amused than he had initially looked. He was a mercenary, not a nursemaid. He would turn me away if he was expected to simply comfort me.

  “Misha had me arrested for treason,” I said, making no effort to keep the emotion from my voice. I was a good liar when I needed to be, but I didn’t want to test my skills against someone with Theron’s reputation. “She accused me of kidnapping and murdering Hara.”

  “Ironic,” Theron replied. “But—”

  I didn’t let him continue. The words needed to get out before he threw me out. “She and Aaron have this whole elaborate plan to stand up to Midnight. They’re mad.” Theron hesitated, listening. “They’ll destroy themselves,” I asserted. “Midnight won’t even need to step in. Misha thinks the serpiente will stand up against Midnight, but they won’t. They will go after the royal house. If they take Misha, I think Aaron will return to his senses, but they’re more likely to go after the Diente—”

  “Slow down,” Theron interrupted. “Start at the beginning.”

  I looked up at him, and shook my head. “I didn’t come here to cry to you. I thought—”

  He caught my wrist when I reached for him. Business before pleasure, always.

  “Start at the beginning, Malachi, and we will see what we can do about sparing your sister’s life. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

  Isn’t it? But…“No,” I said softly. Honestly. “It’s too late. I’m sure everyone here knew it was too late before Gabriel sold her back to us. I just don’t want her to bring the entire serpiente people down with her.”

  It occurred to me at last that, if Misha and Aaron were both killed, only Julian Cobriana would remain. I did not want to imagine what his fury would look like when he unleashed it against the survivors of the Obsidian guild.

  “Aaron would be a fine Diente,” I said. “Misha is the problem.”

  This wasn’t the direction I wanted this conversation to go. Midnight was surely capable of getting rid of Misha, but Nathaniel needed her on the throne in order for his plans to work. Even beyond his intention of using the serpiente as a distraction, the last thing we needed was for Midnight to give another brutal example of what happened when someone was foolish enough to stand up to them just as Nathaniel was gathering his allies.

  “What is Misha’s plan?” Theron asked.

  There, that was the question I wanted. I answered as well as I could, explaining about their scheme to rebel against Midnight by acting within the pure letter of Midnight’s law.

  “Huh,” Theron said at last. He leaned back against the wall, looking amused. “Things do come full circle, don’t they?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Farrell never told you?” he asked. “Of all the people in your guild, I had thought that Farrell would have been honest
with you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “The deal he made,” Theron said, “to buy you and your mother. She was a strong woman, a good worker. Jeshickah did not get rid of her lightly.”

  A lead weight settled into the pit of my stomach, and I asked, “What was the deal?”

  “A bit over two decades ago, the serpiente queen came up with a plan to stand up against Midnight by working within the letter of Midnight’s laws. She was on the verge of making an alliance with the avians and Shantel, as well. Jeshickah did not want the royal leaders involved to become martyrs, so she arranged for their destruction. Discreetly. Farrell agreed to take care of the Naga.”

  My tongue seemed stuck to the roof of my sandpaper mouth, so it took me three tries to whisper, “Lady Elise?”

  Theron nodded.

  Lady Elise, Hara’s mother, Diente Julian’s previous queen.

  “As I understand it, Farrell’s mate left him because she disapproved of the arrangement he had made based on a child’s prophecy.”

  Melissa, Aaron’s mother. It all fell into place like a shattering mirror, sending shards of glass every which way, each one accusative, showing me my own traitor self from a hundred angles. The crime we had spent so many years denying…Farrell had done it. I wanted to doubt it, but what Theron said made too much sense.

  If I hadn’t spoken, made up that prophecy, Farrell never would have made such a damning deal and left so much ruin behind him. Of course, Midnight probably would have found another dupe—

  No, I was done thinking that way.

  But I was a child! I was seven, and all I wanted was not to die. How could I be blamed? It wasn’t my fault…

  I looked up at Theron, and suspected that whether or not he could read my mind, he knew every agonized thought running through my head.

  “You are sure,” he asked, “that taking Misha would be sufficient?”

  I nodded, numbly, and then realized what I was doing and said, “I don’t think it will even be necessary. Once winter sets in, the serpiente will revolt. Serpents don’t like to go hungry. You just need to wait a few months.”