All My Crimes

by Tal Valante

  I have to get to him first.

  I spend that night in the open, huddled over a stinking peat fire. The dogs settle in a circle around me.

  “If you see anything with pointy ears,” I tell them, “bite to kill.”

  The leader of the pack blinks open a drowsy eye.

  But for all my tiredness, I cannot sleep. Eventually, I doze off in front of the fire. My head flops to my chest, and the sharp movement wakes me. I jerk my head up.

  My heart gives a sharp twang and stalls.

  Someone is sitting across the fire from me.

  There’s no mistaking that elegant red armor, the graceful lines of that helmet, and that tall, slender build. I gaze at the elven warrior without sound or breath. He must be staring back, though I can’t tell for certain. The deep eye-slits show nothing but darkness. The winter air feels eerily warm on my frigid skin.

  My heart gives another painful twang. I find my breath; I find my magic.

  Second Sight, offensive. Waves of heat that plow molten furrows in the snow. Blasts of cold that freeze it solid. I shake the air grains until they produce a shrill sound, strong enough to make one’s ears bleed. The dogs who catch the edge of it whine and cower.

  The elven warrior remains sitting calmly.

  My logic begins to catch up to my panic. The empty visor. The indifferent dogs. The useless blasts of pyromancy and ventrimancy.

  Of course they’re useless. There’s no killing a ghost.

  Necromancy is nothing like the Second or Third or even Fourth Sight. It is a bridge that spans this world and the next, aligning them over an impossible gap. Alas, I’ve never taken much interest in mastering its secrets. I cannot conjure a ghost. I cannot exorcise one, either.

  This ghost must have bridged the gap by itself, or else the elven assassin has conjured it.

  Which means he might still be around.

  I leap up, but a wave of dizziness brings me crashing to my knees. I am faint with the intense use of magic. Sluggish, as if I haven’t slept in a week. I feel like I’m floating out of my body.

  Or is it something else? I’m getting more tired by the moment. This is not supposed to happen. I turn my head to the ghost, whose vacant eye-slits are still trained on me. A resonating emptiness unfurls in my chest.

  It occurs to me, with a jolt too faint to rouse me, that the ghost is leeching away my life force.

  I fall into the embrace of the soft snow.

  Years later, it seems, I struggle to my senses with bright light in my eyes and a warm tongue on my cheek. The leader of the pack is standing over me. Late noon. No ghost in sight. No assassin.

  I drive the dogs hard and fast, without even considering stopping for the night. We reach the capital by sun’s peak on the following day. My neck hurts from constantly looking over my shoulder. I leave sledge and team at the city’s gates and enter.

  The capital is brimming with sad, weary people who roam the streets without order and without a goal. I’ve never seen the city so crowded. What happened? All this effort, all this anxiety—am I too late after all?

  I push through the throng to a small clearing and scan the city walls. Gidden’s Griffin Rampant is flying from every tower: full mast, no black cross in sight. I still have time.

  I hold up a man in ragged clothes and a filthy headband. “What happened?”

  “Flood,” he says and spits on the cobblestones. “Dike overflowed up at Mirrenwell. Wiped our town clean.”

  I imagine Gidden will be busy handling this crisis. Even so, I wasn’t counting on the guards blocking all traffic to the palace.

  “Sorry, sir,” one of them says to me. “No petitioners today. His Highness is taking care of the situation. You’ll find food and clothes down on Bakers’ Street . . .”

  His well-recited speech trails off behind me as I leave. Had I told him my name, he might have sent word to the king. Gidden might have granted me audience. Might have heeded my warning.

  A lot of might haves, all of which I can’t afford.

  Besides, the ghost has found me again.

  It is gliding toward me through the masses, a good head taller than most, and the silver trimmings of its red helmet glint in the sunlight. No one flees; no one screams; no one even notes its passage. It is haunting me alone. A terrible weakness washes over me.

  I push my way through the crowd, dodging people and curses and shaken fists. When I reach a street corner and look around, the ghost is nowhere in sight.

  I’ve ended up on Bakers’ Street after all, and I lean against a wall to catch my breath. Makeshift stands line the street, but they are empty of food.

  “We’ll have more in a couple of hours,” a city guard says to a knot of haggard people.

  A lone child stands in front of a bakery, where pastries and cakes are on display in a small glass window. The child’s face is devoid of emotion, but his fists are clenched, and his lower lip is pinched white between his teeth. I can see him swallow every couple of seconds.

  I look at the display and swallow hard myself. But it isn’t pastries I see there. It’s a jug of cool water and a plate of roast venison and roots, laid out on the grass in a forest clearing. Scents of ginger and garlic waft past my nostrils and make my stomach rumble. I haven’t eaten in three days. Haven’t had a drop to drink in two.

  Kalen a-Shan is standing opposite me, beyond the tantalizing food and water. His eyes are light gray. I am sitting on the grass, tied to the great oak that stands in the center of the Circle, the forest glade around which their city is built.

  “You intrigue me, Lord Eve,” Kalen says.

  I incline my head in mock civility.

  “You refuse to break. Tell me, why do you serve him so loyally? The moon has swelled and ebbed, and he hasn’t come for you.”

  His words sting, but I shrug. “Loristan is no fool. He knows he cannot take the forest by force. Will you have him bargain for me?”

  Kalen’s eyes turn a stormier shade of gray. “They say you are his closest friend. They say . . .”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  He cocks his head. “What would he give for you?”

  Nothing, comes the unbidden answer to my mind, and I cannot tell why it brings no pain, only grim determination.

  “What do you want?” I ask instead.

  “We want you humans to change.”

  I snort, I cannot help it. Kalen seems to share my amusement, for his eyes flash a lighter gray as he paces back and forth in front of me. His steps are so graceful, now like a panther’s, now like a deer’s, that I cannot help but admire his form.

  “I know,” he says. “It will not happen. And so we want you to end.”

  “To die,” I clarify. “By your hand.”

  He studies me with eyes now touched with blue. “Would you consent to die by your own?”

  I snort again, this time in derision.

  Kalen stops and makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses the forest, or maybe the entire world. “Tell me, what do you see?”

  I purse my lips, lean my head back against the oak. But I do not resent him enough to withhold a harmless answer, and in truth, I’m strangely eager for the conversation.

  “Well?”

  I look around. “The forest. Trees, grass, skies. Your people, your homes. Probably some animals around here, too. Why? What do you see?”

  “I see a great green spirit sprawling over the land. My people respect it. When we fell a single tree, the soul remains intact. Your people mock the very idea of souls. You would cut down an entire forest in a single day if you could, without mercy or regret.”

  “We need the wood. To build—”

  “To burn?”

  “Fine, yes,” I acknowledge. “To keep people warm in the winter. To cook. To feed the forges that shape our plows—”

  “And swords—”

  “And hammers! To build great things that will endure ages. You elves may live in peace with the world, yes, but you come and go like flowers. You lea
ve nothing behind. What good is your existence? Our people strive higher and higher with every generation—”

  “Enough!”

  Kalen’s eyes are pure steel; his stare pins me to the tree as harshly as a pair of crossbow bolts.

  “You speak of greatness,” he says, prowling toward me, and I press back though I have nowhere to go. “But at what cost? You would sacrifice everything to build your grand vision. But what you build will eventually crumble down, Lord Eve. And only then, when the last man is standing in the smoking rubble, will you realize that nothing you create will ever compare to the spirit of the world—the same spirit you will have murdered on the altar of your glory.”

  His passion strikes a chord in me: so like my own, as deeply rooted, as wholly sincere, as fully immutable. And for the first time I realize how similar we are, so very similar that the chasm between us can never be bridged.

  I all but reel with the sadness of it.

  Then I rally and bare my teeth.

  “Well, what about me?” I say. I jab my chin at my scarred chest, at the food and water. Try not to think about the last two. “You value souls so highly—what about my soul?”

  For once, Kalen’s stare falls from me. I see the pale blue in his eyes as he turns away. His people stand at the edge of the clearing, listening quietly. I can sense them, though I cannot look away from their leader.

  “You are but one among your people, like a tree in the forest,” he says.

  Disposable, he means. Strange, how I fail to share the sentiment.

  “But you’re right. This war will only end with the death of your people or mine. And we intend to win. We’ll destroy the soul of your people, and in doing so, we’ll destroy our own.”

  “Then what makes you better than us?”

  “Nothing. But when we win this war, the soul of the world itself will be saved. That’s all that matters. Either way, both our people are cursed.”

  The elves around us absorb this in grave silence, then slowly disperse. Kalen turns back to me. His eyes have turned deep blue with sorrow, but also, I think, with acceptance, and I realize then how very different we are after all.

  Somehow, I know he is special. He’s important in a way I cannot understand. And it’s neither defeat nor triumph when he picks up the jug of water, crosses the space between us, and puts it to my lips.

  I gulp, but no water soothes down my throat; no real vessel is pressed to my lips. I am gazing at the bakery window display in the capital, with its pastries and cakes and the hungry boy.

  I take a gold coin from my purse and press it into his hand before moving on.

  I strike a wandering path back to the palace and stop across the grand plaza, in the mouth of a narrow alley. The glint of red armor catches my eye immediately: the ghost is standing sentry at the palace gate, staring at me as if it knows I’m there. The one who summoned it must be near.

  I will have to find another way into the palace. Not by daylight, though. By tarrying, am I risking too much? Surely the assassin will also have to wait for nightfall. We run a tight race, he and I.

  I walk away from the plaza, away from the life-leeching effect of the ghost. In a nondescript inn where no one recognizes me, I rent a room and fall asleep as soon as my head brushes the pillow.

  I dream of Kalen.

  He comes to me in the Circle late at night, wrapped in a dark blue cloak, and dismisses the guard, replacing him seamlessly in restraining my magic. I perk up under his stare.

  He straddles my legs and looks down at my bare chest. His black curls smell of flowers and resin.

  “You love your king,” he whispers.

  I know what kind of love he means. I can only nod, even if it places a weapon in his hands.

  “I wish I knew such love.”

  To that I have no answer. Nor can I explain why my heart is wedged in my throat.

  “Does he touch you . . . like this?”

  His fingers trace the map of my scars. Gentle, slender fingers. Fingers hardened with work and war. The strange combination makes my heart stutter against my ribs. So familiar. So strange. I allow it. I’m not sure why.

  “Yes . . .” I manage to whisper.

  “Like this?”

  Kalen’s hands dip lower, to my hips, and my entire being contracts to that singular point of contact between his skin and mine.

  These last months, I have seen him as a fierce warrior, a compassionate leader, a tragic soul. To discover that his passion, bent on me, is just as fierce and compassionate and tragic is almost more than I can bear.

  His fingers ghost over my hip bones, above my trews, hovering, waiting, asking.

  I tilt my head to his ear. “Is this wise?” I say softly.

  Kalen’s lips curl in a conscious, deliberate smile, so alien on his elven face, but nevertheless breathtaking. He reaches for the strings of my trews.

  I flex my hands in their bonds. “Can’t you . . . ?”

  “Shhh.”

  He unclasps his cloak. It flows off his bare shoulders and pools around us like a midnight ocean. The moonlight glows over his lean body, the soaring curve of his collarbones, the smooth chest, the ridged planes of the stomach, all strong but supple as a vine, and his moss-green eyes are cloudy and so close to mine, and for a moment it could be the very spirit of the forest making love to me.

  And it might be madness and it might be treachery, but it’s also beautiful: as soft as a butterfly’s birth and as powerful as the death of a star. And later, when Kalen allows us one last moment of warmth, I can almost imagine a future for the two of our people.

  I wake up in my rented room in the capital, calm and rejuvenated, with the memory of his lips on my skin. For once I’m left breathless in a completely different way.

  I force Kalen out of my mind. He probably died in the last battle, anyway. Alongside his people, where he belonged.

  A glance out the window tells me the night is nearing its deepest. I slip out onto the street and make my way to the back of the palace, where I know just the place to climb the garden wall. I crouch there, poised between the street and the king’s garden, and feel a strange pang of reluctance.

  It’s been over two years since I’ve been here. Three months of hell in the hands of the elves—but for that one night—and two years of recovery at St. Ceperess Monastery. And where was the king in all that time? No, he will not wish to see me, and I do not wish to see him. But he’s still my liege and lord, and his life hangs in the balance.

  I drop down into the garden.

  The soil receives me with a soft squish, the only announcement that Lord Teregryn Eve has come home. Up ahead, the palace stands out of the darkness, illuminated and resplendent even in the dead of night. I head for a postern I know well. Knew well. Before I’m halfway through the garden, two guards come marching on patrol, shining their lanterns into every shadow.

  I stand still, close my eyes, and slip into the Third Sight.

  The world of lights around me dissolves into music once more. The palace plays a strong, steady chorus in the distance; the guards’ lanterns pour out a lighter melody that flits over the garden, carrying its secrets back to their eyes. The same melody is now rolling over me, but I tweak the backwash of music before they come close enough to hear it.

  When I open my eyes, the guards shine their lanterns over me and walk peacefully away.

  Oh, my Gidden, you have grown complacent since the end of the war. If I can infiltrate your palace so easily, so can any assassin. Especially the one who’s breathing down my neck.

  I enter the palace proper and steal through familiar corridors. The guards overlook me. The Third Sight makes me slow and lightheaded, but I push through the weariness. I’m running out of time.

  I’m halfway to the king’s suite when two ladies come down the hallway, whispering between themselves. They break into husky laughter. As they pass me by, the scent of their perfume snags at the back of my throat, and my chest contracts. I can’t suppress it: a
hacking cough explodes out of my lungs.

  The ladies scream. The guards are on me in a heartbeat.

  I don’t bother to struggle. I’ve hoped to avoid this delay, but either way, I’ll get to see the king. The guards grip my arms as if they could subdue my magic with sheer physical strength, and I bite back a grim laugh. They march me to a large office with a desk and shove a chair behind me. I indulge them by sitting down.

  “I need to see King Loristan.”

  They don’t react.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Two of them exchange a brief glance. Yes, they know. The warlock who’s fallen from grace. I can see the curiosity in their ferret-like eyes. They’re bursting to know what happened.

  Well, so am I.

  A tall man enters the room and sits behind the desk. He’s wearing plate mail, and his face looks like the dull end of a war hammer, but his eyes are dagger-sharp. A dangerous man. A good thing he serves Gidden.

  “Darius, Captain of the Guard,” he says with an inclination of his head.

  “I need to see King Loristan.”

  “All in good time, Lord Eve.” He places one loose, mailed fist on his desk. “Tell me, what brings you here under such extraordinary circumstances?”

  As if I would come near the palace under ordinary circumstances.

  “Duty,” I say. “A death threat.” And a ghost, but for now I keep that part to myself.

  Darius narrows his eyes. “There are simpler ways of warning the king, my lord. Surely His Highness would have granted you audience?”

  Would he? I have my doubts. I shift in my chair and glance at the horologe in the corner. Half an hour to midnight.

  A servant enters with a wine tray and places it on the desk. Darius waves him away and pours out two glasses himself. Dry red. Complex aroma of tart berries and clove, and a bite that makes my breath catch.

  “So why this unusual entrance?” Darius says.

  “It’s an unusual death threat.”

  “Really.” He leans back and holds up his glass. The light-bodied wine refracts the glow of the lamps. “Tell me about it. When did it happen?”

  I clench my free hand in an effort not to throttle him. His sharp eyes tell me that he’ll have my full story before he lets me see Gidden, if at all, and damn the consequences.