The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  “You must take the Blood,” Brolli said.

  “I am in charge of this mission, ambassador. And we settled this before.”

  Harric rolled his eyes at the old argument and rose to his feet, poised to flee. Despite his best efforts at stealth, however, the fresh straw rustled, betraying him. If it hadn’t been for Molly letting out a mighty snort and stamping her hooves at the same moment, he’d have given himself away.

  Through a gap in the plank partition, Harric saw Willard moving in Molly’s stall, but to his immense frustration, Brolli remained outside, where he would see if Harric left. Motionless, he remained in the back corner, as any movement might attract attention through the gapped partition. One more noisy outburst from Molly, and he’d cross to the gate of his stall, and hope Brolli was looking the other way.

  The stables grew very quiet as the old knight stood beside Molly, stroking her scarred coat. Harric held his breath. After several long moments, Willard spoke, his voice low and freighted with warning. “If I take the Blood again, ambassador, I break the most sacred vow ever given to a lady.”

  “A foolish oath,” Brolli said.

  “You think the Lady Anna unworthy?”

  Harric cringed. The old argument was straying into dangerous territory; though every Arkendian child knew of Willard’s oath to stop taking the Blood and grow old with the Lady Anna, he was famously private about it. He’d thrown ballad-makers and courtiers into pigsties for indelicate snooping. If Willard found Harric “snooping” now, all the progress he’d made in the knight’s regard would be erased, Willard’s worst opinion confirmed, and the gap between them wider than ever. This when Willard had just started to forgive Harric for the way he’d tricked him into taking Caris as his squire.

  Harric’s hand went instinctively to the witch-stone in his shirt.

  Fink had warned him not to enter the Unseen alone—that he needed protection against scavenging spirits. But Fink had also said the reason Harric had been able to do it the night before was because the spirits had been afraid to come near Sir Bannus and Gygon. If that were true, then Molly would have the same effect, and she was much closer to him than Bannus had been.

  Harric closed his eyes, hoping desperately that dawn hadn’t broken over the crags, so his oculus would still be there.

  And it was. High at the top of his mind, it hung like a sleeping eye waiting to be wakened. Willing his consciousness upward, he pressed gently against it until it widened. As he felt it relax, he pushed harder and rose through, into the Unseen.

  It was like entering a burning building, but without the heat. All around him, the stable blazed with spirit fire. Hay, wood, soil—everything living or once living—gave off ribbons or threads of bright spiritual essence, like curls of glowing smoke. Their profusion in the stable made it difficult to see farther than a dozen paces, and it did no good to sweep his hand through the air to dissipate them like regular smoke; spirit strands merely wavered and whorled and kept their shape.

  His head throbbed with the burden of holding himself in the Unseen, and perspiration bloomed on his face, reminding him to hurry. The night before, he’d had only minutes before he’d collapsed back into the Seen and become visible to all.

  He took a careful step toward the gate, but the straw crackled perversely under his weight, and Molly’s head—now maned in blinding violet spirit—jerked up and she scanned over the partition. Harric froze as a violet eye seemed to fix upon him, and a low growl boiled from her chest. Willard looked through a gap in the planks—so close that Harric could almost reach out and touch him—but the knight looked right through him.

  A wave of relief fluttered behind Harric’s ribs. Run, he told himself. Just run while you can, and noise be damned!

  But someone moved in his path. Two men now stood in the main door to the stables, their spirit strands blazing like signal fires above the fog of essence. Harric could just make them out: it was Sergeant Lane, and his sunken-eyed friend.

  Lane held a club. His friend carried rope.

  Harric bit off a curse. He knew a bastard hunt when he saw one, but he also knew that he could not sustain himself in the Unseen long enough to get out the stable doors and get clear of those two. His head already split under the strain. And if he tried, he’d probably pass out at their feet, easy prey.

  Gods take it. They’d spoiled his escape. He was trapped.

  In the first four years of her reign, the Queen’s allies foiled no less than four plots on Her Majesty’s life. All four were of West Isle origin and resulted in brutal suppressions in the west. Subjects on the East Isle celebrate the occasion of each foiled plot with a holiday, bell-ringing, bonfires, and festivities.

  —From A Short History of a Backward Island, by the Iberg Ambassador Viero Meritosi

  11

  On Treachery & Heroes

  Harric watched in frustration as Lane and Sunken Eyes drew up just beyond the entrance and out of view of Willard and Brolli. As the knight and ambassador continued their argument, Lane appeared to listen. He frowned and shook his head to his companion, holding up two fingers as if to say, “There’s two of them.” Then he glanced up and down the rest of the stable as if searching for someone else. Again Lane shook his head.

  They want to toss me to Bannus. Willard, too, if they catch him alone.

  Black spots swam before Harric’s eyes. Harric felt himself swaying on his feet. Soon he’d be gasping for breath as if he’d sprinted up a long hill, and he’d collapse in full view of everyone. He couldn’t let that happen. At the very least, he had to remain conscious.

  Steadying himself against the plank partition, he released himself back through his oculus and into the Seen.

  The pressure lifted instantly, but he found himself swaying on his feet and struggling to gulp enough air without gasping aloud.

  Mercifully, Lane and Sunken Eyes had left. But they left him in no better position than he’d been in before they came. Bad luck and stupidity, he chided himself. If Willard caught him, he was well and truly cobbed, for what possible excuse could he make? It was the kind of rash and foolish act he might claim was the work of the night-hex, but he knew it wasn’t the hex. This was all his own doing, and Willard would know it, too.

  “If I die, your kingdom falls,” Brolli said, “and Anna falls with it. If you die, what is the point of your oath?”

  “I remain true to Anna.”

  “And what use is that to her? Even she would be telling you drink it. Once we are being safe, you can stop the Blood again. But now, the Blood will make you like Bannus, yes? A giant. A match for him. You must drink.”

  Brolli stepped forward to where Harric could glimpse the side of his face. The Kwendi had lifted his daylids to peer at Willard with his huge, owlish eyes. “It is a simple choice. Either you are drinking the Blood and beat Bannus, or Bannus catches you and forever keeps you a stump like we see last night, a living trophy, and worse.”

  Willard’s breathing sounded almost as labored as Harric’s felt. Harric could see him through the gaps in the planks, standing frozen, caught between terrible alternatives. The old knight turned his back to Brolli—his side now to Harric—and squeezed his eyes shut. Willard’s lips moved soundlessly, and Harric could not help himself but watch. Forgive me, he seemed to say. Then aloud, in a hoarse whisper, he said “Leave me, Brolli.”

  Brolli hesitated, uncertain.

  “I said leave.”

  Brolli left the way he’d come.

  In the silence that followed, Harric watched Willard through the slats, glimpsing parts of his face, parts of Molly’s agitated bulk. The knight’s breathing grew rapid as he fumbled at buckles on his saddlebags, then fell silent again, and Molly went deadly still. The air seemed charged with the tension of some titanic spring.

  Then violet blood painted the straw on the other side of the slats, and Molly let out a tremendous, deep-chested sigh. Willard suckled the wound with urgent, sloppy swallows—the sound of a water-starved prisoner on
a moistened sponge—and red-hot embarrassment flooded Harric. He looked away, ashamed.

  I am so cobbed. So cobbed. His heart hammered so hard that he feared Molly would hear it.

  If Willard caught him spying on this most intimate moment—caught him while the Mad Blood raged through his brain—Harric was a dead man. A hundred tales flashed through his mind—tales of Phyros-riders who slew innocent friends and lovers in the blind fury that came after taking the Blood. Though Harric could hardly classify himself as an “innocent friend.”

  Frozen like a bird before a snake, he gripped the nexus stone, wishing he had strength enough to reenter the Unseen.

  The sucking sound ceased, and Willard groaned, a deep growl in his barrel chest. Then he thrashed against the planks, which made Harric jump. Dust shook loose from the wood and floated up into the air as Molly stamped her chained hooves and tossed her head so Harric saw flashes of violet ears and wine-black mane above the partition.

  The commotion was all the cover he needed. Harric moved across the rustling straw as swiftly as he dared, willing Willard to continue his thrashing. But the noise stopped abruptly, and Harric froze—no farther than a step away from the stall door and freedom, but he dared not move. A glance told Harric that Willard no longer stood beside Molly on the other side of the partition.

  His heart gave a terrific leap, as if to escape his chest.

  Then Willard appeared before him at the gate.

  Harric leapt back with a small cry of fear, as Willard’s face contorted in supernatural fury. Lightning jags of violet veins shot through his forehead and throat. The skin of his cheeks flushed purple. His eyes—now violet, now purple, now blue—burned with so much rage that Harric imagined they’d burst from his skull.

  “Oh—I—” Harric stammered. “I’m so—”

  What came next happened almost too quickly to understand. Molly roared in rage—a sound part snarl, part whinny, part bellow—and Willard jerked to one side. A club from behind slammed on his left shoulder plate, and the old knight whirled with a quickness impossible for a man even half his age.

  Lane’s mouth dropped open in astonishment, and Willard planted a mailed fist in it, sending him flying, along with several newly liberated teeth. Lane crashed backward into the dove master, who also carried a club, and the two sprawled on their backs. Sunken Eyes stood in wide-eyed disbelief, his coil of rope dropping from nerveless fingers into the straw.

  Before Lane or Garon could right themselves, Willard was on them in a snarling frenzy of pile-driving armored fists.

  When Sunken Eyes tried to flee, Willard seized him by an arm and used the man’s momentum to swing him headfirst into a timber support post. Harric didn’t see the impact, because Willard’s bulk was in the way, but he heard a sickening crunch and saw dust shake from the rafters above.

  Harric retreated two steps back into the stall. So much for fleeing while Willard was occupied. As he retreated another step, Willard warded off blows from the clubs, wrested one from Lane, and turned it on its master with horrible efficiency. As the blows fell, Harric shrank into the farthest corner of the stall, out of sight of the grisly scene, and made himself as small as he could.

  His back had just bumped into the far corner when Lane’s dazed and bleeding form rose high above the partitions on Willard’s upraised arms. In the next instant, Willard slammed Lane down on the partition beside Molly’s gate, where he hung half in, half out of her stall. He barely had a moment to writhe in agony before Molly had him by the neck and dragged him squealing into her stall.

  Harric slapped his hands to his ears to keep out the wet sounds of snapping bone and gobbled flesh.

  Outside the stall, Garon lay crumpled, staring with unblinking eyes, his head at a fatal angle from his shoulders. Sunken Eyes sprawled in the straw beside him, gaze fixed on Harric as his mouth moved like a fish out of water, starving for air yet somehow unable to draw breath. Then the eyes glazed, and the mouth fell still.

  The trio had been crushed. Willard now stood at Molly’s gate, his back to her as she continued her noisy meal. For many long moments, the old knight’s chest seemed to heave with passion, armored shoulders rising and falling. Gradually, he stilled, then slumped. His breathing slowed and returned to normal.

  Unlooked-for hope awoke in Harric. In the tales, Phyros-riders woke from rages with no memory of what they’d done. And now it looked as though Willard had no memory of Harric. That would be bastard luck indeed. He could put this whole thing behind him and go back to being the hero who smashed Bannus’s army and…

  Willard turned and looked directly at Harric through a gap in the planks, and Harric’s guts froze. The knight’s eyes no longer burned violet, but rage still burned there, and now they stabbed into Harric like blades through his ribs.

  “I’m so sorry,” Harric whispered, his voice miserable and pathetic. “I never meant—”

  “Mother of moons!” Two guards appeared in the central door of the stables, behind Willard, and stared in shock at the scene before them. “What happened?”

  “These men attacked me,” Willard said, still with his back to the men. His voice came out low, and eerily calm, but his eyes remained fixed on Harric. “They wanted Bannus’s favor, I suspect. They won’t get it. Leave us. I must have words with my man.”

  The men stood transfixed. They looked at each other, and at Willard’s back. Questioning eyes fell on Harric, and Harric realized Willard wouldn’t face them, lest they see some residual violet of the Blood in his features. Harric nodded to the men, and they left.

  In a few swift strides, Willard rounded the gate to Harric’s stall and was on him. Seizing him by the shirt, he lifted Harric and flung him through the wooden partition opposite Molly’s stall. The air whooshed from Harric’s lungs as he impacted with the planks, and the boards sprang from their moorings to tumble in the straw beside him.

  A tiny corner of Harric’s mind noted that this was the second time a Phyros-rider had thrown him through a wall. Clambering to his knees, he thanked his luck for loosely nailed planks. Then Willard loomed over him and Harric cringed, expecting to be thrown again, but instead—with what seemed like more effort than it had taken to toss him—Willard stepped back, fists trembling at his sides.

  “Well, now,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now you know it all.” He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking as if struggling against the immortal urge to murder. Flushes of violet swam across his cheeks. When it finally retreated into his flesh, he opened his eyes and laid his burning gaze on Harric.

  Guilt and self-loathing pinned Harric and sealed his mouth. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t sound squirmy and feeble. Half certain he deserved whatever the old knight would say to him, he forced his eyes to endure his glare.

  There came a wet cracking and gobbling from Molly in the stall beside them.

  Willard inhaled deeply through his nose. “You are a jack fool, and a sneak,” he said. “You have repeatedly violated my rules, and now you have violated my trust in the most personal way I can imagine. The only thing keeping me from discharging you immediately is that blasted ring on the girl’s hand, and the fact I have a responsibility to get it off. If I discharge you now, the ring will torment her even worse. She might follow you, and I can’t risk that.”

  Harric raised his eyes to meet the old knight’s scorn. “I’m sorry, sir. I couldn’t think how to get out—”

  Willard waved a hand as if striking a bat from the air. “Your words mean nothing. I’ve known men like you. Too smart for your own good. Respect nothing. Walk on others. Walk on what’s sacred. It’s all a game to you. Everything is open for a trick, a ruse, a joke.”

  Harric bit his tongue.

  In the courtyard, a couple of guards called to each other. Someone slammed a door.

  “Last night,” Willard continued, “you used Brolli’s magic in violation of my orders and the Second Law. I overlooked it because you also saved our lives. But I do not overlook this. If you d
isrespect my rules or privacy again, or if I find you sneaking about, I will clap you in shackles and bundle you on a horse until we get to Brolli’s people, where I’ll give you to the hangman. Do you understand?”

  Harric nodded.

  Willard stared at one bloody gauntlet and flexed the fingers. “No pain. Already my joints heal. The change won’t be complete for weeks, and it won’t be visible for days. Until then, Brolli and Caris will not notice, and you will not tell them of my oath-breaking. Even when they learn it themselves, you’ll never reveal that you witnessed the act today. You’ll take it to your grave. Is that understood?”

  Harric bowed his head. He’d seen Willard in the ugliest, most unguarded moment of suckling and swallowing at Molly’s wound, and the knight would not forget it. He looked up to search Willard’s eyes, but Willard had returned to join Molly without awaiting answer. Harric heard him hurling a saddle on her towering back, and the jingle of harness buckles. Harric climbed to his feet and lingered a moment outside Molly’s stall, searching for something to say, but the knight’s back remained steadfastly to him.

  The fissure that opened between them in the moment he’d tricked Willard into taking Caris as his squire now yawned, an unbridgeable gulf filled with judgment and disdain.

  Dazed, Harric crossed the stables to Snapper, who looked at him and stamped, impatient to get going. As he brushed the gelding’s chestnut coat in preparation for saddling, Harric returned to something Fink had said twice to him—first on the cliff when they’d made their partnership, and again in that stable that morning. You’re going to have to leave them, kid. That’s the price of heroes.

  Only Harric didn’t feel like a hero. He felt like a first-rate cob.

  Said the First Herald to our knowing queen, “Krato never intended a woman to rule.” Holy Chasia quipped, “Yet in Krato’s own herds the Phyros mares are larger than the stallions they rule. Does this example not show us that a woman’s place must be the throne?”