Inkmistress

by Audrey Coulthurst

  I froze after crossing the threshold. Hal rushed over from the other side of the room with Iman in his arms. A small woman perhaps twice my age stood near Iman’s bassinet—I recognized her as one of the king’s guards. One of the maids who had often attended me stood by my bedside, looking nervous. A spill of red fabric lay across the bed—some garments I didn’t recognize. I scanned the room in confusion, trying to figure out what this was all about. Zallie had a grim expression on her face that quickly changed to concern as Nera gave a little cry.

  “Asra, look outside.” Hal pointed to the window.

  “Oh no,” I whispered, my heart plummeting.

  In the pale morning light, snow had begun to fall.

  The king’s guard crossed the room to my side with the athletic grace of a mountain cat. “My lady, the king has assigned me for your personal protection and to escort you to the coliseum for the battle,” she said.

  I went hot and then cold. How could I fight like this? I hadn’t had any time to recover from my injuries—and more important, to confront Nismae about her theft of the Fatestone.

  “These vestments were sent for you, my lady,” the maid said, holding up a simple dress in shades of crimson and a bloodred wool cloak lined with brown fur.

  “As long as I can wear my own cloak as well,” I said. Red was the king’s color, not mine. I belonged dressed in shadows—in my mother’s legacy. I wanted her protection for the battle to come.

  The maid put my hair into a braided crown, then helped me into the crimson dress and placed the red cloak over my shoulders. All the while, I shot Hal a series of desperate looks he seemed to understand. He regretfully gave Iman to Zallie and pulled on his boots, subtly stashing his weapons in the hidden places where he always carried them.

  “Keep them safe,” I told Zallie. “If the unthinkable happens, run. Go as fast as you can. One or both of us will meet you where we agreed.”

  She nodded her understanding, her face pinched with worry. It wasn’t far to the Switchback Inn, our rendezvous point, but it might seem that way with two babies and the chaos that would take over the streets after the battle regardless of who won.

  I kissed Iman and Nera good-bye, and then Zallie’s cheek, too. She blushed.

  Then the king’s guard led us away.

  We met with the king’s procession and paraded through the streets surrounded by onlookers. The Nightswifts’ stream of white pennants made its way through the city on a lower street, flooding in the direction of the coliseum. Thick flakes of snow pelted our faces as we walked. The noise of the crowd was deafening. I gripped Hal’s hand like I was trying to crush the life out of it.

  “What are we going to do about Nismae and the Fatestone?” I asked. It was the only way I could have stopped this day from unfolding as it had.

  “I’ll enter the coliseum with you and then go to Nismae. She and Ina will be settled in the challenger’s quarters soon.” His voice was resolute.

  Nervousness raced through me. As if crossing lines between the challengers wasn’t bad enough, I hated the idea of him leaving now. If something went wrong, we’d be separated during the battle. I’d be occupied managing the king’s enchantments, but it would have felt better doing it with Hal by my side. But what choice did we have?

  “She isn’t going to give it to you,” I said. The chances of Nismae parting with it now seemed very small. I’d have to make a trade I wasn’t willing to, like giving up helping the king. Could I make that sacrifice? If he won, he’d surely kill or imprison me for treason. I shuddered. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life locked away in some dank cell. I couldn’t let Iman be abandoned a second time.

  “As you once pointed out, I’m a thief. I’ll find a way to get it,” he said.

  The coliseum loomed before us. Some of the Swifts had chosen not to walk, and instead swooped down from the sky to line up outside the gates. Gone were the subtle vestments of trained killers and thieves. Today they dressed in white to honor their champion for the crown.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I whispered.

  “I don’t either,” he said.

  These might be our last moments together before the battle. I hadn’t expected them to come so soon.

  “Go now, before I change my mind and decide I can’t do without you,” I said.

  He smiled. “I’ll be thinking of you every moment,” he said.

  His words sent a thrill through me—the only reprieve from my anxiety.

  He kissed me, and I let myself get lost in it for just a few heartbeats until he reluctantly pulled away.

  “Be swift and be safe,” I said.

  He nodded, and then he split away from the group at the coliseum’s entrance.

  Once inside the king’s quarters, I turned back to watch the end of the procession.

  Ina was last to appear, and I shuddered when I saw her. She winged through the low clouds, white against white, until she finally burst free with a roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the city. Onlookers pointed and screamed, some of them fleeing. How long had it been since anyone had seen a dragon in Corovja? Or anywhere?

  Those who had come to Corovja in the past moon were finally going to get the show they’d been waiting for.

  Ina landed in front of the escort that had preceded her, and they saluted her with their white flags. She roared again, then loosed a plume of flame. Steam rose from where she’d melted the snow, leaving the cobblestones scorched black.

  The challenge had begun for the crown of Zumorda.

  CHAPTER 36

  THE COLISEUM WAS ALREADY FILLED FROM TOP TO bottom upon our arrival, thousands upon thousands of people waiting for the show to begin. I tried to ignore the dull roar of the crowd and the impossible level of fatigue in my body as I set up my work area in the king’s preparation chambers.

  Eywin greeted me with a warm hug when he arrived. “We were so worried,” he said. “Where were you? Hal seemed to have some idea, but he didn’t have any luck tracking you down.”

  A swell of gratitude for Hal rose in me. It must have been hard for him to keep from Eywin what I had been up to, but I was grateful that he had. I didn’t know if Eywin could be trusted not to tell the king what we knew of the Fatestone, and the last thing I needed was another complication in getting it back from Nismae.

  The king strode in just as I set out the last of my vials.

  “All ready?” he asked.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” I turned to face him. He wore simple leathers meant to go under heavy armor—breeches, a fitted vest, a black shirt. Some of my blood would go on his temples, but I also planned to paint a few symbols where they couldn’t be seen. Ina and Nismae would have a hard time telling what I’d done without using the Sight.

  I did not hold back as I drew the bloody symbols on his skin and armor. Once the battle began, there wouldn’t be any opportunity to add more. With each symbol I drew, more and more threads of magic connected us until a web of power lay between us, initiating a gentle exchange of energy that would become fierce when the time required it.

  “The final ones will go on your hands, Your Majesty,” I said.

  He held out his hands to me.

  The Fatestone adorned his ring finger.

  I felt dizzy. It wasn’t Nismae who had stolen the Fatestone from me.

  It was the king.

  The truth slammed into me like a battering ram. I stared at him, frozen. “You took it from me,” I finally said.

  “Only for your protection. It’s very sought after, you know—it would not have been safe for you to carry around such a powerful artifact. Someone might hurt you to get it, and I couldn’t risk losing my most important battle asset right before the challenge.” He spoke with the calm and rehearsed manner of someone who expects to be believed.

  “Yes, you could.” My voice rose. I’d dispensed with formality. “Whoever attacked me left me there to die!”

  He chuckled, like it was all some sort of joke to him. “I would
n’t have allowed that to happen.” He glanced at Eywin, and I knew then that he hadn’t expected me to survive my ordeal in the tomb. That was why Eywin was here today—because the king hadn’t known I would come back.

  “But you did,” I said coldly. “Why do you think my fingers look like this?” I held out my hands. The ends of my fingers were still scraped and tender from clawing my way out of Veric’s coffin.

  He shrugged. “It’s not important now. Finish your work. You can’t turn your back on me without risking Zumorda losing its magic. You’re half made of magic, so that seems unwise at best.”

  “You . . . you betrayed me,” I said. And it seemed perhaps Eywin had, too, though I didn’t know to what extent.

  “I did what’s best for my people,” the king said. “We have a fine and prosperous kingdom. Now with the Fatestone I can rule it forever.”

  Forever. Even demigods didn’t live forever. Mortals were certainly not meant to.

  “Prosperous . . . so that your people are driven to banditry to pay their taxes? Fine . . . when you have multiple massacres in the space of days?” I asked him. I’d only sworn my services to him because I thought it was the path to the Fatestone. What was I supposed to do in battle now that he’d made the truth about himself clear?

  Annoyance finally cracked his facade. “I don’t have time for this right now. I don’t have to defend my rule to you. You are but a subject who serves me for the greater good. Remember that.” He walked away to where Gorval and Raisa made their own preparations on the other side of the room.

  None of my words had meant anything to him.

  I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what to do. My blood already painted his skin. I could wait until he entered the arena to break the enchantments and let Ina make short work of him, but what then? The kingdom would collapse. The same would happen if I tried to tear him apart myself, and since he was bound to the gods, it might incite their rage. Then what? I doubted they would give me the chance to rewrite history under those circumstances.

  No good choice existed.

  There was nothing left to do but see the battle through—if not for myself, then for my kingdom. I had to survive so that I could get the Fatestone back from the king and rewrite the past. It was the only way.

  I went out to the royal viewing box and waited for the battle to begin, casting glances into the audience, looking for some sign of Hal. I shivered with nerves even though the snow had stopped.

  In keeping with tradition, as the challenger, Ina entered the battlefield first.

  When the doors on her side opened, the crowd shouted a mixed chorus of cheers and boos. She wore white again, fitted pants that would allow her to move without getting caught on anything and a white shirt that floated around her like silk. Only the faintest swell of her belly indicated that she’d had a baby just one moon ago. I doubted anyone else noticed.

  It was hard to look away from her face, which was painted with my blood. She could have put the symbols anywhere, but I knew why she’d done it—to strike terror into people’s hearts. To make sure they remembered her whether she lived or died in the challenge. Even in human form, she looked fierce and feral, more animal than human.

  Three red streaks were smeared vertically down one of her cheeks, and two horizontal ones adorned the other. At the center of her forehead, the blood had been painted into a circle. The markings glowed with magic in my Sight. Nismae had grown masterful with her enchantments in the time she’d had to practice. I caught a glimpse of her just inside the entrance to the challenger’s quarters, waiting at the ready to manipulate the energies of Ina’s enchantments.

  Where in the Sixth Hell was Hal? My anxiety was reaching a fever pitch. I wanted to talk to him. I needed his help figuring out what to do. How could I support the king after his vile betrayal? Had he hurt me more or had Nismae? I didn’t even know anymore.

  Ina stopped about a quarter of the way into the coliseum, looking very small in the middle of the battlefield, but that illusion was dispelled the moment she took her manifest. As she changed into the dragon, the crowd stomped their feet and roared. She leaped straight into the air, breathing a plume of flame that showered the audience with sparks. Then she landed and stalked around the ring, making a display of herself. No one dared to defy the boar king by carrying Ina’s flag into the king’s coliseum, but everywhere I saw people with white ribbons tied around their wrists. She was not in this alone. Most of her supporters seemed to have come from outside Corovja. They were the people of small towns, of overtaxed cities, those who had felt distant from the crown for far too long. Ina was their champion and their voice. Now she had to fight for them.

  Gorval emerged from the king’s side of the stadium as the first champion of the king. He walked out in human form as Ina had. The crowd murmured in confusion. People asked each other who would pit this shrew of a man against a dragon. I knew he’d been hiding something, but I didn’t understand until he took his manifest.

  Gorval’s body rippled and expanded. When the magic stopped distorting the area around him, I gasped. His manifest had the body of a lion, the wings and head of an eagle, and the scaly tail of a serpent—a chimera, someone who had taken multiple manifests. I had never seen or heard of anything like him before, not outside of legends. He screamed his own challenge, a sound so high and sharp the entire audience collectively winced.

  Then both challenger and champion took to the sky.

  The chimera wasted no time, using his ear-piercing scream to his advantage. But Ina had both size and speed on him. She dodged his attacks with ease. My body trembled with memory watching her—she was even more deadly than the reckless creature she’d been when she killed the bandits outside Amalska. Nismae wasn’t even going to have to touch the powerful enchantments she’d set.

  Guilt tasted bitter on my tongue. Even if I could tell Nismae now that the king had the Fatestone, it wouldn’t change anything. He’d already achieved what both of us hoped to prevent, and the amulet was no use in battle anyway. All it would do was ensure that whoever won and wore it never had to age again.

  When Ina tired of letting the chimera chase her, she snapped off his tail in one bite. She spat it at the feet of the king, and it rolled through the sand toward us, oozing blood, still writhing.

  I gagged.

  Then she used a burst of flame to torch the chimera’s wings, and tore out a mouthful of pinion feathers while they still burned.

  My stomach heaved again.

  Gorval’s shrieks now were not of challenge, but of agony as he clumsily flapped back to the ground, barely managing to stop his fall. The sound of his pain cut me to the core. If I could have done anything to help him, I would have. I didn’t care that my instructions had been explicit—save my power for the king if the battle came to that point. But in my weakened state, there was little I could do for Gorval without having enchanted him before the battle. I had to save my power whether I wanted to or not.

  When Gorval hit the ground, Ina was already there with a swift strike to the neck to end him. He collapsed into the sand, but she wasn’t done. She picked up his dying body in her claws and flew a victory lap around the coliseum, showering the spectators with blood and sand as they screamed and cheered. I pulled up the hood of my red cloak, shuddering as Ina passed overhead—and for the first time, grateful for the color of the wool.

  Ina finally dropped the carcass in front of the door to the king’s side of the coliseum only a few lengths from where I sat. Her nearness made me shiver with nerves. If she knew how much support I was supposed to lend the king, would she pluck me out of the audience and kill me for fun? It was against the rules of the challenge, but I wasn’t sure that mattered.

  Ina paced through the ring while attendants cleared the body and raked up as much of the blood from the sand as they could. She lashed her tail, eyes still glittering with bloodlust, impatient for the second challenger to arrive. She didn’t look the slightest bit winded, and the chimera hadn�
�t managed to land a single strike on her. The only blood on her was mine, and she hadn’t even needed to use the magic of it yet. Nismae still stood waiting in the wings, biding her time for the battle that mattered.

  The longer they went without using the enchantments, the more nervous I became. It was true that the strength of my magic was more than a match for Nismae’s, but she had time and experience on her side. I was exhausted from spending two nights in a tomb.

  High Councillor Raisa ascended the stairs next. She moved unsteadily, using the railing to support and guide herself. But once she entered the ring, she straightened, the years seeming to fall away as she skimmed power from the thoughts and feelings and emotions of everyone in the coliseum, all of which still ran high from the battle. Her magic stung, like thorns or nettles working their way into my skull. As she did so, her body unbent itself until she stood steady on her feet, looking closer to forty winters of age than the many centuries she’d lived.

  Ina roared and it sounded like laughter. She wasn’t the least bit afraid. I clenched my cloak so tightly I thought my hands might go numb. What none of us knew was how many of my gifts Nismae might have been able to impart to Ina with my blood. If she had figured out how to use the most dangerous of my powers, all it would take was a tug on the threads of Raisa’s magic to pull her away into nothingness, to hand her over to the shadow god.

  Part of me wanted to make a break for it—to race across the ring to the challenger’s side and find Hal. Get Zallie and the children and leave now before the worst of the battle could come to pass. I didn’t know how to help the king who had betrayed me so deeply, who had left me to die. But how could I switch to Ina’s side when she and Nismae had done things just as terrible?

  Unlike the ill-fated chimera, Raisa was not going to let Ina make the first move. She flicked her hand and a cloud of magic floated toward Ina, who snapped at it, only to freeze in place when it hit her. She backed up quickly, shaking her head, trying to free herself of the misty shroud following her. She screamed a roar of frustration and hurt.