by Sarah Remy
“Have you come from the coast?” he asked, lifting his voice to be heard over the shouts from the wall and the scrape of the wind. “How goes it, there?”
“Badly.” One of the men came down the temple steps, rolling the edge of his tunic nervously in both hands. “The keeps still stand, god willing, but the rest is gone, razed or looted or both. They came out of the night on foot and on ponies, ponies of our own breeding, my lord—good, sturdy animals—and slaughtered people in their beds, my lord.” He rubbed his eyes, knuckling away moisture. “All of Whitcomb, gone, blood in the streets and on the dunes.”
“You escaped.” Another stroke of luck, Mal thought, too good to be true. “How?”
“The king’s constable, my lord,” the man replied, awestruck. “She came for us into Whitcomb, herself and a troop of good horsemen, scooped up those of us still standing and ran us back to the western gate.”
“Countess Wythe broke the line,” Mal repeated coldly.
“Aye, my lord, and we’re grateful for it.” The man indicated his companions where they cowered against the temple wall. “It was a near thing. All eleven of us would be dead but for her courage. We owe her our lives.”
“She risked all of Wilhaiim for the sake of eleven Whitcomb vineyard workers.”
The man winced. “Aye, my lord. Though I suppose she hoped there were more than eleven of us still alive when she thought of it.”
“She should not be thinking past the wall she guards,” retorted Mal. The wind gusted in reply, sending billows of ash across the temple steps. “Find your way to the Royal Gardens, all eleven of you. There is a refugee camp set up there, near the barracks tower. There you will be fed and armed, if there are weapons left.”
“But, my lord, what if they breach the gates? Will we not be safer inside the temple?”
“They will not breach the gates,” snapped Mal, glowering at the man. “The wards bound into the stanchion are strong still. I’ve made sure of it. So long as every person does his part as required, including the bloody Countess Wythe, the city will hold.”
“Aye, my lord,” the farmer answered, although with a dubious shake of his head, before running back up the steps to join his companions in good fortune. Unexpected fury made the tips of Mal’s fingers smart. He buried them in his armpits, tight fists, to smother sparks. Turning his back on the temple, he marched on.
The Maiden Gate was locked down, the portcullis lowered, the murder hatch open to the battlement above. A band of infantrymen stood just inside the portcullis, blocking egress. Through the bars Mal could see the backs of soldiers and horses—the eastern line standing in wait. He could hear the hiss of missiles let go all at once from the battlements and then the blast of trumpets. The captain at the gate drew his sword as Mal approached then puffed out a breath in relief.
“Lord Vocent.” He saluted in lieu of a bow. “We’ve just had word. There’s another lot come up from the south near the wood; they’ll be on us any minute now, Skald take them and break them.” The man grinned, revealing gaps where his front teeth had at some point in his career been knocked out. “But don’t fret. We’re ready.”
“Excellent,” replied Mal, dry as blowing soot. “I’m going out.”
The captain’s grin wobbled. “We’ve orders to keep everyone in. Come direct from the throne, my lord.”
Mal drew murk from the crevices under the gate and used it to grow tall. “I’m going out.”
It was basic showmanship, but the guard took a step back. Mal could smell the metallic tang of his distress. Whatever he saw in Mal’s eyes or in the cape of roiling, angry shadows changed his mind. He sheathed his sword.
“Through the guard tower, then, my lord. I canna open the portcullis. This way.”
He led Mal past the infantrymen and into the right-side tower. There another guardsman, standing at attention between stacked barrels of Low Port tar, kept watch over the winch used to open the gate. The captain made straight for a thick wooden door, twin to the one they’d just come through and barred three times with padlocked iron. He wrapped his fist on the wood, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the wall.
“Coming through! Georges!” he hollered as he opened the padlocks. “Do you hear me, man? One to come through! Move out of the way!”
The door cracked open. A soldier in ash-dusted infantry togs thrust his head through the gap. Behind him in the morning horses danced anticipation and soldiers cursed roundly at less bold farm folk who wavered in the face of rising wind and smoke.
“What’s all this, Pietre? You know we’re not to let anyone out or in.” The infantryman spat his displeasure in a wad of dark spittle onto the floor of the guardroom. When he saw Mal, he froze, aghast.
“Opion.” Mal regarded the tainted spittle by his boot with loathing before studying the pin and badge on the man’s breast: Black Abbey. “I should have your commission for indulging on duty.”
“Opion’s no offense, no more’n ale in a flask to make a long night tolerable, my lord. The priests hand it out to help with pain and the nerves, and thank the god for that.” Pupils turned to pinpoints, Georges was too far gone to realize his danger. The drug blunted his senses and loosened his tongue, allowing for indiscretion. “You won’t take back my commission, not today—you can’t spare even one swordsman against odds like these.”
Khorit Dard had used opion to turn fierce desert mercenaries into slaves willing and eager to die for the sake of Roue’s flower fields. The poppy flowers, while reputedly beautiful to look upon and worth their weight in true gold, had nearly put an end to Roue. If not for the Rani’s determination, Baldebert’s initiative, and Mal’s talents as an assassin, the small kingdom would surely have fallen to sand lords and opion traders.
While he’d long suspected that the theists eased their most difficult patients with the drug, and had turned a blind eye to the practice for the sake of compassion, Mal did not intend to let the poisonous habit spread throughout Wilhaiim. As far as he was concerned opion, while not so quick to kill, was in the end just as deadly as Curcas seed.
Mal widened the crack between door and threshold with a swift kick, reached through the opening, and ripped pin and badge from the Georges’ breast, tearing fabric. With the medals, he stole the far more valuable honor of the fellow’s remaining years, syphoning life until the soldier, mouth working in mute astonishment, collapsed to his knees, falling through the door into the tower. Georges was still alive, but barely. His poached vitality fizzed through Mal, a heady rush.
“One way or another, opion will kill a man.” He gazed down at gap-toothed Pietre where he knelt on the floor, chafing Georges’s wrists. “Were I you, I’d stick to ale.” He stepped across the fallen man. “Pull him through and bar the door.”
Pietre, white-faced, had the sense to do as he was told. Mal waited until he heard the thunk of iron dropped into place on the other side of the door before confronting the line. Wielding still his cloak of shadows, Georges’s energy flushing his cheeks and turning his insides giddy, he scanned the mass of stinking humanity charged with defending Wilhaiim’s walls.
They were Black Abbey infantry: Kingsmen, villein, tradesmen, and tinkers. A hardy people used to subsisting off a sometimes-fickle farmland. They were away from home, enduring hardship and facing mortality. What they knew of Wilhaiim’s magus they’d heard, for the most part, third-hand. They were prepared for awe. If any realized they’d just observed murder they were prepared to give the most powerful man in the kingdom the benefit of doubt.
The looks turned his way were equal parts quiet adulation and fear. He let them stare, allowing himself one last moment of vanity before it all went to pieces. While Black Abbey ogled, he took a moment to observe the state of their garrison, the cavalry on their horses, the archers on the battlements above his head, the wind plucking at plumes and pennants and making the sounds of battle seem at first near and then far. He could not determine for certain from which direction the smoke came, if it was
only from the west as expected, or if the situation had changed overnight.
“What’s the word?” he shouted up at the wall.
A Kingsman peered down, pike in hand.
“Within the hour, my lord,” she shouted back. “Wind’s making it difficult to get news, or see anything past the highway. But Wythe’s sent a runner—more of the bastards have come up along the edge of the wood, through another hole in the ground. They’ll be heading our way anytime. We’re ready. Black Abbey won’t break.”
Her confidence made the eavesdropping infantry whoop and stamp their feet. Mal nodded, pleased. He left the protection of the wall for the cavalry blockade—“Let me through, thank you, make way”—speaking softly to courser and lancer as he slipped between stirrups, patting withers as he squeezed through the barricade of horseflesh and mail. They opened around him and then closed immediately after.
Once free of the line he was alone, exposed, the highway under his boots. Haze obscured the horizon but for a few feet in either direction. He held out a hand, checking for ash, but the wind had shifted and he did not think the western fires were yet close.
“Hold your fire!” Someone cautioned from the battlements. “By the Virgin! That’s our man, you fool. Don’t shoot!”
Which recalled Mal to the present danger. He let go the shadows and conjured wards instead, silver-green in the smoke. He unsheathed his sword though he had not lied to Parsnip—he did not plan to get so close to anyone as to put it to use. He closed his eyes just briefly, reviewing the constellation in his head. A new cluster of stars expanded to the east, the enemy increasing. East was where Earl Wythe was stationed and Liam and Avani. He resisted the temptation to follow the link in that direction. She blocked him still.
Always? he wondered bitterly, but she did not relent or let him peek through her eyes.
It did not matter. She could look after herself, and his business was south.
He walked for a while along the highway a nose length in front of the cavalry. If they could see him, the archers on the wall would not waste precious artillery. The horses snorted in his direction, no doubt thinking Mal a ghost come out of the morning. If he closed his eyes the lancers were an incandescence in their saddles. Pride swelled behind his breastbone. They were beautiful.
Squatter’s row was gone, crushed beneath the line, hovels scattered. He hoped its residents were safely inside the city walls and not winding down their final frail hours with makeshift weapons in hand. But for Gerald Doyle’s kindness in taking a broken boy in from the Rose Keep, Mal thought, he might have ended up in a similar situation: homeless and hopeless, often out of his mind—if he had managed to live so long.
He found his way through the haze to Flossy Creek, leaving Wilhaiim behind. On the other side of the merry water Rowan stepped out of a fallow field and walked at his side.
“You’re worse,” Mal said without rancor. “Than Siobahn ever was.”
“I know you’ve begun to worry she might have been like me,” Rowan replied. He walked with his hands folded behind his back, barefoot, a furrow between his eyes. “Madness personified and not a dead thing walking.”
“Avani saw her,” argued Mal. “Spoke to her. And the sidhe.”
Rowan grunted. “What’s to say they wouldn’t me, if you wanted it? You were odd even as a child, Mal. Talking to people that weren’t there. Pretending to play games with lads and lasses I couldn’t see.”
“Ghosts,” retorted Mal. “Just ghosts.”
“Mebbe. But you’re worried.”
“It hardly matters now, I think.”
“Aye.” Rowan blew out through his nose. “Are you sure you want this? Absolutely sure—”
“Quiet!” snapped Mal. “Listen!”
The wind, capricious, blew now from the northeast, and with it came increasing sounds of combat. The noise of horses and soldiers in distress, the clash of blade on blade, screams of triumph and despair. One second he thought the battle was upon him, the next, wind and smoke made it difficult to tell. He crouched in the road to check the ground for vibration and in doing so avoided a flock of iridescent arrows come out of the murk. Their tips burned a pungent flame and where they landed tiny fires struck up.
“Fuck me,” gasped Rowan, squatting beside Mal. “That was close.”
“Don’t move,” said Mal, forgetting for a heartbeat that Rowan was just a symptom of his deterioration. He pressed his hand to the ground. “They’re here.”
The desert blew out of the smoke on a gust of wind, more than one hundred kilted warriors thundering across the field on coastal ponies. The sand snakes nocked arrow after arrow as they surged toward the Maiden Gate, kindling fires as they went. They were silent as they rode, yellow eyes fierce. The cacophony came from those giving chase, soldiers on foot and on coursers, racing in pursuit. Few of the cavalrymen still held their lances; most chased with sword in hand. They flew Wythe’s ragged pennant.
The men and women on foot were struggling, bloodied and wild faced. One man loped past, badly burned and wheezing, pitchfork in hand. He blinked to see Mal squatting in the dirt.
“Don’t just sit there pissing yerself,” he said. “Wythe’s gone and Black Abbey’s next. Make yourself useful, man. Die like you mean it.”
“Fuck me,” Rowan said again, with more spirit. He waited for a break in the charge then grabbed at Mal’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. One moment.” Shaking Rowan off, Mal clapped palms over his ears to block out his surroundings.
Wythe’s gone. Black Abbey’s next.
It was a terrible gamble, snuffing lives without first being sure of his choices, and he knew there would be mistakes made. But there wasn’t time to be certain. He wouldn’t second-guess intuition. He had, after all, just seen them ride past. He should be able to get it mostly right.
He found them in his head, a clot of one hundred or more vivid arid suns, lives well spent, lives wasted, lives hardly begun and those near their ending. He flexed his fingers over his ears, a clenching of power.
They extinguished all at once.
But not gone, oh not gone. He swallowed them whole and they filled him to brimming, knocking him over in the dirt where he lay curled, breathing through bliss.
When it was over Rowan gave him a hand up.
“Aye, that’s that,” Rowan said, reaching out to brush broken wheat from Mal’s curls. “Now you’ve sealed it. Even Renault won’t be able to look past that display.”
“Keep the Curcas handy.” Mal bit his tongue to keep back an inappropriate snort of laughter. “Terror makes good men do bad things. I suspect by the time I’m finished, the court will be ready to do their worst.”
Chapter 21
From the beginning Avani had assumed Wythe would hold the line until the last. Wythe were the best of the best, bred from infancy to fight in the saddle, the boldest lancers with the finest armor on the strongest mounts, as well prepared as any garrison could be. For the infantry as well as the cavalry courage was a matter of personal honor. Their countess was constable to the king. Thus, their bravery could not be called into question.
Every man and woman in the garrison intended to die a hero, to make king, countess, and family proud.
Their mettle held through the endless, hazy hours before dawn. It held even as the sun rose and the countess did not return at first light. It held when the wind became a gale, sending smoke and dark clouds scuttling overhead, blowing apart tents on the hill behind their line. Lancers shifted in the saddle to keep from going numb. Horses dozed in place and then started again when the wind sent soot in their direction. The foot soldiers did the same. Avani wove her way back and forth through the unit, offering a kind word to those who looked as if they needed comfort, chatting quietly with those who were in danger of growing bored. She heard Morgan’s voice as he conversed with his commanders, but couldn’t see him past the horses. Once she thought she heard Liam’s laughter and her heart was lighter for it.
Wi
th the sunrise came a rider up the highway from the castle and her heart was gladder yet to see Russel’s earnest form. She stood on tiptoe with the rest of the infantry and strained to catch a glimpse of Morgan’s face when Russel gave her report. She couldn’t quite, but it didn’t matter. Word spread quickly down the cavalry line and through the infantry.
Whitcomb was destroyed and the west flank was burning, and by all accounts lousy with sand snakes. There had been no word from Countess Wythe overnight, and none again when, with the dawn, messenger birds had arrived in the city. For the time being His Majesty was presuming his constable lost. Wythe was without its most seasoned commander as the battle spread from west to east. His Majesty thought it prudent the young earl step aside and let one of Wythe’s more practiced lancers call the charge.
But if Morgan meant to concede the king’s wisdom he was not given the chance. Two more riders came around the hill, not from Wilhaiim, but from the southern slant of the red wood. Their horses were stretched to a gallop, the riders pressed low against their necks as they flew across the ground. Avani saw only the tops of their heads as they reined up in front of the earl, but their shouts rang out, audible to everyone in the garrison.
“My lord! My lord! They’ve come up just near the wood, my lord! A whole passel of snakes, armed to the teeth! Coming now, my lord! Just this way!”
The infantry let out cries of relief and anticipation. The wait was over. The cavalry kicked their horses to wakefulness, adjusted their helms and raised their lances. Wilde’s hooves pounded on grass as Morgan rode up and down the garrison line, preparing for the push. Avani watched the pointed top of his barbute, bobbing as he shouted. She could not see Liam. More ash fell from the sky. On her shoulder Jacob shuddered, rattling his feathers in the wind. The man in front of her turned suddenly and coughed up bile onto his neighbor’s clogs.
“Aye, son,” his neighbor said. “That’s it. Get it out now and you’ll fight better for it later.”
