The Black King (Book 7)

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He turned. Wisdom stood behind him. Wisdom’s face was dirty, his hair—usually so beautifully braided—was tangled and matted. He looked even thinner than he had before. He put a finger to his lips and pointed toward the street.

  Matt looked. Two Fey were walking in the direction that he had walked. They had no faces—or it seemed like they had no faces. Coulter had told him about those Fey. They were Spies.

  They’re following me? he signed.

  Wisdom nodded. He took Matt’s hand and led him through the alley to the narrow street on the other side. This one wasn’t as well lit. They crossed it and went into another alley.

  Wisdom led him to a small house. It was dark. He went to the east side of the house, and felt along its foundation. Then he grabbed something and started to pull.

  Matt watched for a moment, feeling as if this were a horrible nightmare. Wisdom glanced over his shoulder, his face eloquent. He wanted help.

  Matt reached down and found that Wisdom was pulling on a handle. Matt grabbed it too, and together they tugged. A large door opened toward them, knocking them back. The hinges squealed, and Matt looked around.

  No Fey, at least that he could see.

  Wisdom pointed toward the opening.

  “What’s down there?” Matt whispered.

  Wisdom pointed again.

  “You first,” Matt said.

  Wisdom made the sign for all right. Then he pointed to another handle on the inside of the door. He wanted Matt to pull it closed after them.

  Matt nodded. Wisdom crawled inside the hole, his feet making solid thunks against a wooden stair. He disappeared into the darkness. Matt hesitated, then shrugged. He had had only vague plans, and they included going under the city. He had a hunch that was where Wisdom was taking him as well.

  Matt got into the hole and grabbed the door’s handle. He climbed down, then pulled the door closed on top of him.

  He couldn’t see anything. He felt slightly dizzy. He put his hands on the steps he had touched, and went down, tapping the next step with his foot before leaning on it. He couldn’t even hear Wisdom’s breathing. Matt’s heart was pounding so hard that he was afraid it would knock a hole in his chest.

  But he went down, and he counted the stairs as he went so that he would know how far he had to climb if he were going to reach the door again. He didn’t hear anyone above him either, and he didn’t hear that squeal of hinges as the door opened.

  They weren’t being followed, at least.

  Why had the Black Queen sent those Spies after him? Had she known that he was lying? Or was that common procedure with anyone who wanted to be Enchanter to the Black Queen? Who did they think he would have led them to?

  Matt shuddered. It didn’t matter what they thought. He would have led them to Coulter and Arianna.

  A hundred steps down, his foot hit stone. He felt a hand on his arm and he felt the hand make the sign for safe. He raised his left hand and used an old spell that Coulter had taught him. A lightstick formed in his hand and illuminated the small space.

  Cobwebs covered everything. Dirt hung in ropes around them. The walls, mostly made of stone, were crumbling, and piles of dirt covered the floor. The stairs he had just climbed down were rotted. It was amazing that they held his weight and Wisdom’s.

  Now he understood how Wisdom had gotten so filthy. He had been hiding in the tunnels.

  “You followed me,” Matt said.

  Wisdom nodded. He signed, Too dangerous to see alone.

  Their invented language had its weaknesses. Matt wished again that Wisdom would have let him repair his tongue. “Who is too dangerous? Rugad?”

  Wisdom nodded.

  “You knew I would fail?”

  Wisdom shook his head. Impossible.

  “My failing?”

  The mission.

  Matt let out a small sigh. “They’re following me to see who I lead them to, right?”

  Wisdom nodded.

  “I was planning to go back tomorrow to get the horse and to see if I can use the dolls.”

  We do it my way, Wisdom signed. We use the tunnels.

  “I’m not sure the magick will work through walls,” Matt said. “Not with someone already in a body. We might get a random soul.”

  I will help you. We will see him together.

  “I thought you were afraid of him,” Matt said.

  I owe him. Wisdom touched his mouth. For the maiming, Matt realized.

  “You could let me help you. The Domestics would have helped you too.” It was an old argument, but it was one they had never settled.

  Wisdom shook his head.

  “It would make things easier, especially now,” Matt said.

  Wisdom sighed. He glanced up the stairs and then leaned against the wall. He signed, Patience, which was his way of saying he had a long explanation.

  “All right,” Matt said.

  Wisdom touched his mouth and shook his head. You are the first true friend I’ve ever had. The first one who will do what I ask because you think it’s right, not because I have Charmed you.

  “Well, we’re friends now,” Matt said. “You can talk.”

  No. This mission must be your choice. If I have my Charm, I might make you do what I want.

  “I’ll be all right,” Matt said.

  Wisdom took him by the arms. It was his way of saying telling Matt that he wasn’t listening.

  “All right,” Matt said. “Try me again.”

  Wisdom let go of him, took a deep breath, and signed, If you do what I ask you may die. We may die. It must be your choice.

  “Would we destroy Rugad?”

  Wisdom nodded.

  “Then it’s my choice,” Matt said. “Let me give you your voice back.”

  Wisdom looked at him.

  “We’re friends for good, and if you can talk, you might be able to help us more. Will you let me do that?”

  It is a waste of magick.

  “No,” Matt said. “If we’re going to take risks, we use all of our strengths. I could have used some Charm this afternoon.”

  Wisdom smiled. How long would it take?

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like it before.” Matt stared at him. “But I’m willing to try.”

  We do this, Wisdom signed, only if you agree to follow my plan before you finish fixing me.

  “I don’t even know what your plan is.”

  Wisdom nodded. You must trust me.

  “I do,” Matt said. “And I’m grateful for your help.”

  Wisdom sighed, straightened his shoulders, and then opened his mouth. Matt stuck the lightstick in the wall and prepared to use a spell he had only read about in books.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  SOMEWHERE UP THIS RIVER were the Eyes of Roca, the Cliffs of Blood, and the Roca’s Cave. Gift had once walked from Jahn to the Cave. It had taken him what seemed like forever, and he had gone across land. He had no idea how long it would take by ship.

  He wondered if Arianna would have him followed if he went east up the Cardidas instead of west. He supposed she would. Bridge had used the word “paranoid” to describe her. It seemed accurate.

  Gift gripped the ship’s wooden rail and leaned into the breeze. The air was cold and damp even though the sky was clear. The lights of Jahn prevented him from seeing all but the brightest stars. The stars had become familiar to him in the months he’d spent at sea. Losing them to the artificial light felt like losing old friends.

  He heard a creaking behind him, and he turned. In the thin light from the shore, he saw a tall form behind him. The light reflected off the shock of white hair.

  Xihu. She had been gone all day, summoned by Arianna.

  So much had changed just in the last few hours. He didn’t know how he’d tell Xihu about Lyndred and Bridge. He doubted Xihu would approve. He wasn’t sure he did, but he felt safer having them here. Lyndred struck him as an impulsive girl who wasn’t used to thinking on a global scale. Her father was more sensible
and, if Gift decided to trust him, might be the resource that Gift needed to help understand the rules of the Fey.

  “Good to see you back,” Gift said.

  Xihu came up beside him and put her hands on the rails as well. “Staring at the future?”

  “Thinking,” he said. “I sent most of the Nyeians into the city to get us supplies. Everyone else is belowdecks. Unless you saw someone else, we’re alone up here.”

  “And free to talk.”

  He nodded. She probably couldn’t see that in this light, but he didn’t care. They knew each other well enough to understand each other’s silences.

  “What did Arianna want?” Gift asked.

  “What you had once hoped for.”

  “She wants you as Shaman?”

  “Yes.” Xihu did not sound pleased. “Arianna needs a pet Visionary.”

  “So she is Blind?”

  “She made a Shadowlands for me to prove she wasn’t.”

  Gift started. He had so accepted Lyndred’s view, even while denying it, that the idea that Arianna could make a Shadowlands struck him as absurd. “It was a proper Shadowlands?”

  “It was small and we didn’t go inside it, but it looked like a proper Shadowlands. Maybe her Vision has diminished. Or maybe she’s just tired of ruling with only herself for counsel.”

  “If that were true, she would have accepted my offer.”

  Xihu sighed. “You have to stop assuming that you know this woman. She is not the one you remember.”

  “I’m trying to accept that.” The breeze shifted direction and blew a strand of hair across his face. He brushed it away. “Are you going to serve her?”

  “Yes,” Xihu said.

  Gift’s fingers tightened on the railing. When he left the Eccrasian Mountains with Xihu, he had told himself that she would become Arianna’s Shaman. But somehow, after Arianna’s transformation, he had thought that Xihu would turn the post down.

  “She needs me more than you do,” Xihu said.

  “She’s the Black Queen,” Gift said. “Of course she does.”

  “I tried to get her to change her mind about banishing you.”

  Gift held his breath.

  “She said no.”

  Of course she did. She was getting everything she wanted. She was taking away all that he had bit by bit.

  “I almost decided not to serve her then,” Xihu said. “But I realized I might be of more use to the Empire at her side.”

  “You certainly will. You can’t do much for the Fey from Leut.” He hadn’t meant that to come out as sharply or as bitterly as it had. But the words were there now.

  Xihu put her hand on top of his. Her palm was dry and callused, the skin almost scratchy. “I told her I care for you and I didn’t like her.”

  “She must have wondered why you wanted to serve her then.” Gift was feeling betrayed and he wasn’t sure why. This had been his idea from the beginning. Even this morning, when she had been summoned, he had told her to go and asked her to serve his family. He had thought it best that someone keep an eye on Arianna.

  “She asked me questions,” Xihu said. “I answered them. And then she asked me if I wanted to serve her.”

  “Questions?” Gift asked.

  “Hypothetical situations,” Xihu said.

  He bit his lower lip. He wasn’t going to ask her what those situations were. He didn’t have the right to know. Information between a Shaman and another Visionary was confidential.

  “She knew I was coming back here,” Xihu said. “I think she wanted you to know what I asked.”

  Gift shook his head. “It’s none of my business.”

  “It might be,” Xihu said. “It might have been a veiled threat.”

  Her fingers curled around his. The gesture was no longer soothing. It was designed to keep him at her side. How well she knew him. He would have walked away so that he didn’t hear what he wasn’t supposed to.

  Here he was following the rules of his people and Arianna was flaunting them. Everything had turned upside down.

  “She wanted to know if she destroyed a golem and its soul if that was considered Blood against Blood.”

  He stiffened. “She wants to kill Sebastian?”

  “She used him as the example.”

  A coldness deeper than any he had felt in his life filled him. “Arianna loves Sebastian.”

  “She could barely call him by name. She mostly called him the golem.”

  Gift pulled his hand from Xihu’s. “She can’t be my sister. She can’t. Arianna loved Sebastian more than anyone, even our father. She always wanted Sebastian beside her.”

  “If she’s not your sister, who is she then?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out. Another Shifter, maybe.”

  “I suppose that could be possible,” Xihu said. “But sometimes, Gift, the Black Throne corrupts those who sit in it. Your sister has been Black Queen for fifteen years.”

  “She’s never touched the Throne.”

  “But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t touched her.”

  He was silent. The wind blew his hair in his face again. “Why would she want to kill Sebastian?”

  “She feels he betrayed her. At least that’s what she said.”

  “What do you believe?”

  “She asked about Links. She said she knew that yours and Sebastian’s were closed, so she knew that harming Sebastian wouldn’t harm you. But it felt like a sideways question, like there was an undercurrent I wasn’t getting. You’re not bound to Sebastian are you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure how the magick works in creating a golem. All I know is that he has been a part of me my whole life and if I could figure out how to re-establish our Link, I would.”

  “You didn’t close it?”

  “No.” Gift would have told her the story, but he wasn’t sure how much he could trust her any more. “Did you tell her it was all right to kill Sebastian?”

  “I told her that I believed destroying a golem did not cause Blood against Blood. I also told her I wasn’t sure of this, that I am not an expert on Golems and I know no one who is.”

  “You think that will stop her?”

  “I think I might be able to stop her. I hope that she’ll seek my counsel enough to listen to it, to stop her craziest schemes.”

  That sounded like the Xihu he knew. He walked back to the rail and took her hand, holding it lightly in his. “I know we planned to do this, but you don’t have to serve her if you don’t want to.”

  “There hasn’t been a Shaman to the Black ruler in nearly a hundred years,” Xihu said. “Some of the changes in the Empire were caused by the lack of a Shaman. I hope to remedy that.”

  “Nice answer. But you still don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “My wants don’t figure into this, Gift. I have to serve where I am most needed.”

  “She needs you more than I do.” He worked to make sure that didn’t sound like a question.

  “She needs more than I can provide,” Xihu said, “but I am what she has at the moment.”

  “And me? I’m sane and going to Leut, so I’ll be all right?”

  “No,” Xihu said. “You are a sensible man, but you have to be careful as well. I just can’t be in two places at once.”

  She took his other hand in her own. They were standing at the bow like lovers, holding each other’s hands in the moonlight. She hated this as much as he did. After all, she was going to a palace she had never seen before, to serve a woman she didn’t like. The bitterness he felt left him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You surprised me. I thought you’d stay here.”

  “I would,” she said. “But I sense a real need there.”

  He nodded.

  “You must listen to me now,” she said. “I will tell you two things and you have to hear the first before I tell you the second.”

  She sounded serious. She hadn’t spoken to him like a Shaman much during their trip. Mostly, she had
spoken to him as a friend.

  “You must trust your own heart,” Xihu said. “You must believe in yourself. You are the only one who has ever rejected the Black Throne. That was prophesied. You are the center of what’s to come, and that’s usually a good thing. You must use the rules as guidelines only. If you stray outside of them, make sure it is for the right reason.”

  “How will I know what that is, Xihu?”

  “If you do it for malice or greed or anger, you are wrong. Listen to yourself, Gift. You have an innate sense of right and wrong, the most developed sense of justice I have ever felt among our people. I think it comes from your Islander heritage. It is certainly not Fey.”

  He smiled and then, knowing that she couldn’t see the smile, squeezed her hands. She squeezed back.

  “This next is the hardest.” She had lowered her voice. “I was hoping that Skya would tell you this, but she is not going to. I think she is afraid of it.”

  “Of what?” Gift asked.

  “She wants nothing to do with the Black Family. She has told you of her father, right?”

  “The Visionary who got himself killed and nearly destroyed a country.” Gift didn’t even try to keep the disgust out of his voice. “Yes, she told me.”

  “You must realize this is a powerful heritage. It sowed terrible doubt inside her, and made her the outsider that she has become.” Obviously the two of them had spoken of this. Gift wondered why Skya had waited so long to tell him.

  “When she finally told me, I understood.”

  “Then did she tell you her father’s last Vision?”

  “No,” Gift said.

  “The day her father sent her to Nye, he told her of the Vision he’d had concerning her. He said she would one day carry the heart of the Empire within her.”

  Gift gripped Xihu’s hands harder. He might have been hurting her, but he couldn’t make himself let go. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “I do now, yes.” Xihu sounded calm, but she didn’t want to tell him. He could feel it. It was as if she were betraying confidences tonight—Arianna’s to whom Xihu felt no loyalty, and now Skya to whom, it seemed, Xihu felt much loyalty. Or was she simply afraid of Gift’s reaction?

  Gift waited. He knew Skya wouldn’t tell him whatever this was. She had had a chance when she told him about her parents, and she hadn’t said anything.