Crowns of Rust (Kingdoms of Sand Book 2)

by Daniel Arenson

  Here, too, lived her lumer.

  Worm knelt in an iron cage, wrapped in a ratty blanket. Two dishes lay on the cage floor, one full of water, the other with gruel.

  Worm was a young woman, but she looked old. Under Seneca's care, she might have looked much like Ofeer—a pretty Zoharite with lush black hair, smooth olive skin, and large brown eyes. But serving Porcia, the lumer had withered. That black hair now hung in a tangled, oily rag. Worm's frame had dwindled, leaving her limbs stick-thin, and her eyes seemed too large over her gaunt cheeks. Her lip was swollen from a blow, and bruises covered her body.

  "My prince!" she said. Shock, then fear filled her eyes, and she cowered, huddling at the back of her cage.

  Pity filled Seneca's heart. He knelt and placed his key into the cage door, but that seemed to only frighten Worm further. She pushed herself back, covering her face with her arms, a trapped animal.

  "I'm not going to hurt you," Seneca said, shaking his head sadly, torn between pity for Worm and hatred for what Porcia had done to her. "I've come here to talk." He swung open the cage door. "Come out."

  Worm hesitated, staring around, terror in her eyes. He gestured for her.

  "I won't hurt you," he said again, softer this time.

  Trembling, Worm crawled out from her cage and knelt before him, head lowered. "My prince." She looked back up at him, eyes damp. "You should leave, my prince. If she hears I spoke to you, she . . ." Worm glanced toward the torture instruments on the wall, then back at him. "Please, my prince."

  Seneca found himself clenching his fists and grinding his teeth. More than ever before, he desperately needed to defeat Porcia, to take this empire from her. How many more girls would his sister torture? How many more limbs would she sever, how many more organs would she devour? How many millions would cry in anguish under an empire Porcia ruled?

  He knelt before Worm and dried her tears with his sleeve. "What's your name?"

  She stared at the floor. "This one is nothing but a worm."

  "No." Seneca shook his head. "You're not a worm. You're a human. You have a real name, or did once. What is it?"

  Her trembling increased. "I . . . I am Worm, I—"

  He placed a finger under her chin and raised her head toward him. He stared into her eyes. "Nobody will hurt you. Porcia can't hear us."

  A tear hung from her chin. "Noa," she whispered. "My name is Noa Bat Seean."

  Seneca tucked strands of her hair behind her ears, revealing more bruises. "Noa, I'm here to help you. I'm here . . ." His voice dropped to a whisper. "To ask about Porcia."

  Noa bowed her head, shivering. "Porcia treats me very well, my prince. She is most kind. She is—"

  "—a cunt," Seneca finished for her. "A cruel, sadistic, bloodthirsty monster. That's who my sister is. I know it. You know it too, though you dare not speak it. Noa." He held her hands in his. Her nails were bitten down to stubs. "Tomorrow at the games, my father is going to officially choose an heir. I think he will choose Porcia. If she becomes empress . . ."

  Noa stared back into his eyes. He saw that she understood.

  "What do you wish me to do, my prince?" she whispered.

  He still held her hands in his; they both still knelt on the floor, facing each other. "You know Porcia better than anyone alive. Better than me, better than my father. I need you to tell me everything about her. All the sadistic, monstrous things she's done and hidden. Things that she lets nobody outside her inner circle see. I need you, Noa, to give me the dirt."

  If before Noa had been frightened, now she seemed to panic. She rose to her feet, trembling, and fled to the back of the chamber. She cowered between a twisted skeleton and a suit of human skin that hung from a peg. The deformed animals in the cages, the conjoined twins Porcia had stitched herself, yipped and snapped their teeth and banged against the bars.

  "I can't, my prince," Noa said. "I . . . please. She'll hurt me. She'll—"

  "She'll hurt millions of people if she's empress," Seneca said. "And she'll hurt you more than ever, emboldened by her new position." He walked toward Noa, trapping her between his body and the wall. "Together we can take her down, Noa. We can make sure she never ascends to the throne. I promise you. I swear on my mother's grave. I will protect you from her. If I must burn half the city down, I will protect you. Nobody will know what we spoke of here, and if Porcia tries to harm you again, she will meet my blade." To demonstrate, he drew the dagger he kept hidden under his toga.

  Noa's eyes hardened, and just for an instant, it felt as if Seneca were looking through a mask. That he saw a different soul peering through those large brown eyes. A soul forged of iron. A soul as hard and heartless as Porcia's.

  Then Noa looked away, and once more she was trembling, and new tears flowed. She nodded and stepped toward a shelf at the back of the room. Several scrolls stood here, wrapped in velvet casings, each scroll's title embroidered onto the cloth. Seneca read a few titles: Medical Oddities by Master Femario, The Dungeons of Berennia, The Breaking of Slaves, Demonic Incantations, and other gruesome volumes on topics of torture and devilry.

  Noa pulled one scroll off the shelf, the length and width of her forearm. She peeled off its velvet cover, revealing rolled-up parchment the color of jaundice. She held out the scroll to Seneca.

  "It's made of human parchment," she said. "Porcia skinned several victims to make this scroll."

  Seneca cringed and took the scroll from her. The parchment was soft, supple, fleshy. It felt almost like stroking a woman.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "Her journal," Noa replied, meeting his eyes again, and for just another instant, he saw that different person—calculating, strong.

  You're not all that you seem, Noa Bat Seean, are you?

  Seneca scrolled through the parchment. He sucked in breath, and his belly curdled. He looked over the scroll at Noa.

  "Is this real?" he whispered.

  Noa nodded, head lowered, and nervously twisted her fingers. Her cheeks flushed. "Sometimes she made me watch. Sometimes she made me take part. She would write it all down, every time. All those . . . unholy, shameful things she did, made me do." She lowered her head, letting her hair hide her face.

  Seneca returned his eyes to the journal, shaking his head in disbelief. As he rolled through the scroll, he kept revealing more details of Porcia's "encounters," as she called them. One page described a night in the northern garrisons, sleeping with seven auxiliary soldiers, one after another. Another page described capturing boys from a village in Gael, forcing them to pleasure her, then slitting their throats and tossing the corpses into the river. Other pages included lists of legionaries she had bedded, great orgies described in every detail. Some involved her own soldiers, others involved Worm, and all sickened Seneca.

  "The acts described here . . ." Seneca grimaced. "It makes even the wildest nights in a brothel seem tame." Face twisted in disgust, Seneca read from one segment of scroll, written in his sister's confident handwriting. "That night, after drinking a flagon of wine, I smuggled two gladiators into the palace, brutes with cocks the size of tent poles. I took them into my mother's tomb, and I fucked them both—right atop the old witch's grave. Right with Mother's marble statue watching us. I bet the hag liked that. Someday soon, I'm going to fuck men over my father's grave too. Maybe I'll dig up his bones and use them to—" Seneca had to stop. He could read no more. He looked back at Worm. "This has been going on for how long?"

  "A few years." Noa stared at the scroll, eyes haunted. "She made me watch. Every time. Sometimes she made me take part. In the wildest orgies, with blood and sweat . . . she made me take part. And she'd laugh. She'd laugh as I cried, and she'd write it all down. Afterward, to torment me, she'd make me read the scroll to her. To relive those nights. I would read and she would laugh, and then another night, it would all start again."

  Seneca felt sick. Yes, he had partaken in his own nights of debauchery on occasion. He had visited brothels. He had made love to Ofeer. But th
ose had always been tender encounters. Nights of love, not of this filth, this violence. Seneca wanted to gag . . . but alongside the disgust rose elation.

  This is it, he knew. By the gods, this is it. I've got her now.

  Noa fell to her knees, weeping, hugging his legs. "Please, my prince. Please. Don't take this scroll. She'll find out. She'll hurt me. She'll know. She'll force me into chains, and she'll bring out the pinchers, and—"

  "She won't hurt you ever again," Seneca said. "I promise you, Noa. But I need to take this scroll." He turned toward the door.

  "No, wait!" Noa rushed toward him. "You can't. She'll know it's missing. If you take the scroll, you must take me with you."

  Seneca narrowed his eyes, annoyed now. "And what would I do with you? Set you loose on the streets, where you'd starve in a gutter? Hide you under my bed like a boy hiding a stray pup?"

  Those damn Zoharites! First Ofeer was begging him to save her family. Now Noa was begging him to save her. Couldn't the damn desert rats take care of themselves?

  "Please, my prince," Noa whispered, tears in her eyes. "Don't place me back in my cage. Take me to the palace gates. I'll find my own fortune from there. I can work in shops. I can beg for food if I must. Anything, even death, would be preferable to that cage."

  She clasped his hands in hers, and Seneca felt his blood heat. Beneath the grime, Noa was not bad looking. There was beauty to her, much like Ofeer's. If he could nurse her back to health, bring out that beauty, like a man tending to a dying rose . . .

  But no. Seneca shook his head. It was too risky. He could risk taking this scroll for a few hours, and Porcia would be none the wiser. He would have enough time to show this filth to his father, to stain her image. But surely, Porcia would notice her Worm missing at dawn.

  He stuffed the damning parchment into his toga. He left the crimson, velvet cover behind; he filled it with another scroll, one he chose from a chest on the floor, and returned it to the shelf. Unless Porcia felt like reading her work within the next few hours, nothing in the chamber would seem awry.

  "I'm sorry, Noa," he said. "Truly I am. I can't free you yet. But once Porcia falls, I promise I'll return for you. I promise."

  She wept as he guided her back into her cage, as he locked her inside, as he walked toward the door, the scroll hidden in the folds of his toga. Yet as Seneca stepped out of the attic, he turned around once, and he saw Noa staring at him. Her eyes were dry, and she was smiling thinly.

  NOA

  The boy was gone. A fool. She snorted. A fool like the rest of them.

  As soon as the attic door closed, Noa pulled her key out from her pocket, the key she had crafted with Luminosity. She unlocked her cage, stepped out onto the stone floor of the attic, and stretched.

  Worm, they call me. She scoffed. All conquerors, princes, and emperors end up food for worms.

  She stepped toward the shelf and lifted the scroll's crimson binding, which Seneca had left behind, stuffed with different parchment. Noa passed her hands over the velvet.

  "You should have taken the binding too, boy." She sighed. "I spent long hours sewing and embroidering it. It made the scroll look so much more impressive. And you just left it behind!"

  She twirled around the room. Shedding so many crocodile tears always made her want to dance. She pulled one of the skeletons off its stand, wrapped the bony arms around her, and cavorted with her cadaverous partner around the room.

  "Soon, darling." Noa kissed the skull. "Soon we'll be dancing in the streets, us and all the skeletons of Aelar, a great dance macabre over the ruins of an empire."

  She laughed, then slapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the sound. No. She must still be careful. Her work here was not yet done.

  She returned the skeleton to his stand, closed her eyes, and thought of home.

  Noa had been to Zohar only last month on Porcia's campaign. She had soaked herself full of lume, and her reserves were still strong, the magic coursing through her, giving her strength, knowledge, a warmth in the cold. She lived now in this attic, but before her, she saw the rolling dunes. The olive trees on the mountains. The city of Beth Eloh, ancient beyond measure, a place of copper, stone, gold, countless prophecies and magic.

  She had only to think of those ancient brick walls, those metal domes, those palm trees rising over the desert, and she was drawing upon the lume, weaving it, luminating it. The luminescence shone in her eyes and inside her palms, framing her fingernails with threads of gold.

  She pulled a sheaf of parchment from a shelf.

  Human parchment, she thought and laughed. That one had come to her on the spot, and the prince had loved it, had lapped it up like the good dog that he was. She had known he would come to see her, of course. She had known for days. Foresight was among the four pillars of Luminosity, and Noa had always been a mistress of the light.

  Her hands aglow, she summoned the Muse, another of the Four Pillars. It was Muse that had let lumers build this very tower and the palace around it. Muse that had raised the Amphitheatrum, sculpted the gods, inspired the music and poems of an empire. Muse that had let her forge keys from metal scraps, giving her access to every chamber in this palace. It was Muse that now flowed from her hand to her quill, writing on the parchment, forging the handwriting of Prince Seneca.

  Noa read aloud as she wrote. "It was in Zohar that I first fucked my own sister, my sweet Ofeer. Yes, she is my sister! I knew it from the start. She revealed it to me in the cave, and it only made me desire her more. I know that Father would not accept our forbidden love. I'll keep it secret from him, until one day, when he least expects it . . . I will stab the old goat-shagger in the back. Then Ofeer will be my wife, and her statue will rise on the hill instead of his!"

  Noa laughed. Perfect. Of course, Seneca did not know the truth. He did not know that Ofeer Sela was, in fact, the daughter of Emperor Marcus, that he had thrust between the legs of his sister.

  But Noa knew. Noa had the Sight. Noa was a child of Luminosity, and none in Aelar were safe from her wrath.

  "It's funny, isn't it?" she asked a deformed calf in a jar. "It was Seneca who engaged in filth, not Porcia . . . yet it will be my mistress who falls for impure sins."

  Noa folded the piece of parchment and hid it on a shelf. For safekeeping. To be used only at the hour of need, should she choose to destroy the boy. He would be so easy to destroy.

  She laughed again and slapped a shrunken head that swung from the ceiling, letting it swirl around the room, as if it too were dancing.

  "They stole me from my home," she told the head. "They beat me. They chained me. They made me watch as they butchered my people. Now I will destroy them, one by one, pitting them against one another until nobody is left."

  KOREN

  Under the blazing sun, Koren swung his pickaxe, chiseling away at the marble as the whips chiseled away at his back.

  "A little to the left," he said. "Just . . . down a finger and . . ." The whip cracked. "Perfect."

  "Silence!" The overseer snarled. "I'll flay your skin and wear it like a coat if you don't shut your maw."

  Koren glanced at the man. The overseer was massive. He was larger than the slabs of marble the miners were cutting from the quarry. Sweat shone on his bald head, and blood—Koren's own blood—stained his whip.

  The quarry spread around them. Koren had seen limestone quarries back in Zohar, but this place dwarfed them. Shelves of stone rose across the mountainsides, white and blinding in the sun. Hundreds of miners stood on scaffolds, hammering at the marble, then shoving wooden slats into the cracks. Hundreds more bustled below, carrying the white blocks of stone—each larger than a man—onto wooden transports. Mules tugged wagons, engineers pointed and argued, and overseers patrolled between the collared slaves, landing their whips on any man who so much as wiped sweat off his brow.

  Koren had suffered more than his own share of lashes. He imagined that his back was about as ugly as the overseer's face. But he was still alive, still chiseling
at the marble, not a feat to be taken lightly. Since arriving in this place, he had seen fourteen men die—crushed under stones, fallen from scaffolds, or beaten to death.

  Koren kept swinging his pickaxe. He stood on a shelf of stone, a thousand feet above the surface of the world. The cliff rose even higher at his side, so high Koren's head spun. The marble ledge he stood on was narrow, barely wide enough for his feet. Whenever the wind gusted, he cringed and pressed himself against the cliff; he had already seen the wind blow one slave down to his death. He swung his pickaxe again and again, driving cracks into the very shelf of stone he stood on. All around, across the cliffs, other workers were doing the same.

  "Work faster, you worms!" shouted the overseer, moving across the worksite. "Emperor Marcus is building a triumphant archway to commemorate ruling over you wretched maggots. If you don't bring him marble faster, he'll build it with your bones."

  Koren doubted his bones could even build a cradle right now, let alone a triumphant archway; they felt ready to crack. A few other men worked with him, none from Zohar. One was a swarthy Nurian, his skin so dark it was almost pure black. Another was captured on the Gaelian front, a burly man with blond hair, his pale skin burning in the sun. Several other slaves were from Phedia, a realm Emperor Marcus had defeated a decade ago.