The Defiant Heir

by Melissa Caruso

  “We took a dozen, and left the rest in the village.” He pulled in a broken breath, bracing his hands on his shaking knees, bent nearly double. “There must have been … twenty of them?”

  I scanned our two dozen soldiers, struggling to push aside the desperate worry clutching at my chest and think clearly. Highpass perched on the western side of the mountain, separated from the village and the notch above it by the long ridge we now climbed. We could reach Bree and Terika quickly from here, before the road left the ridgetop and swung left along the mountainside, but getting help from Highpass would require hours of travel there and back. We were the only hope they had.

  “We can’t leave Lady Amalia and Zaira unguarded,” Sergeant Andra snapped.

  “That’s fine, because I’m going with them,” Zaira said roughly, fury simmering in eyes that dared anyone to contradict her. “That should even the odds, and then some.”

  Andra regarded her analytically. “It certainly would. Lady Amalia? Shall we assist the princess and our Falcon? Most likely the raiding party will run at the sight of reinforcements, if they’re still there.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

  “We can’t take the coach on that path,” Andra said, frowning.

  “You can’t even take horses on it,” the messenger reported, between gulps of water. “It gets rocky. We’ll have to go on foot. Hurry!”

  I turned to Andra. If she was the traitor, I didn’t want her with us in such a dangerous situation. “Take the coach up to Highpass. Get reinforcements in case we need them, and an alchemist to assist Terika with the cure for the villagers.” Or to replace her, if she was hurt or killed, but I wasn’t going to say that in front of Zaira.

  Sergeant Andra looked as if she wanted to argue, but she swallowed it and saluted. “As you command, my lady.”

  I ducked into the coach to grab my satchel. I dipped a hand in as I hurried back to the others, to make certain my emergency elixir bottles were in there—enough for three days, which my mother and I had deemed sufficient time to find a competent alchemist in any corner of the Empire—and my fingers closed on the cold nub of Marcello’s button.

  “Look,” I muttered. “We’re bringing a couple dozen soldiers with us. Are you happy?”

  “Who are you talking to?” Zaira asked.

  “No one.” Even in a crisis, I had no desire to subject myself to whatever ridicule Zaira would devise if she learned I was talking to a button.

  We jogged after the soldier boy along the narrow footpath. I puffed clouds of steam and kept my hands tucked into my sleeves against the chill air; there’d been no time to pull on the soft leather gloves tucked in my satchel.

  The trail cut along the mountainside through low scrub pine, then began a rocky climb toward the notch we’d seen from the ridge. My city boots scrabbled and slipped on the stones, and I scraped my palms catching myself on my hands more than once. Zaira hopped from rock to rock more nimbly, though she had to tie up her skirt to keep it away from her ankles. Fear for Bree and Terika scraped like a clawed thing at the inside of my ribs, urging me faster despite my unfitness for mountain scrambling, but I couldn’t help a sigh of relief when the path leveled out again.

  Then we rounded a bend and saw bodies strewn across the trail, lying twisted where they’d fallen among the roots and rocks.

  “Grace of Mercy! Watch the trees,” Braegan shouted. Most of the soldiers faced outward, muskets ready, covering the handful who ran to check the fallen.

  I sucked in a breath sharp with horror. One of the corpses wore a scarlet uniform.

  Lienne.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Terika.” Zaira’s voice had an edge of fury bordering on madness. I took one look at her face and was suddenly very glad for the jess on her wrist. I could almost see the flames writhing just beneath her skin. “Where is she?”

  We moved cautiously closer to the fallen, musket barrels bristling in all directions. Most of the bodies wore Vaskandran green, but there were also two in Raverran blue, one in Callamornish white—and, of course, Lienne. Anguish wrenched my chest at the sight of her, bloodstained rapier still clutched in her hand, pistol fallen among the rocks nearby. The coil of her gray-streaked braid had come loose, and it trailed behind her, stiff with blood from the half a dozen gunshot wounds in her torso.

  She’d been so alive just this morning, smiling over Terika and Zaira. And now here was all that was left of her, a bloody and empty thing, discarded on the path like a soiled glove. I’d thought she might be the traitor, but she’d died defending her Falcon. Graces keep her soul.

  Out of sight up the trail, someone moaned.

  We hurried toward the sound, muskets out, passing more dead Vaskandrans along the way. Dread of what we might discover weighed down my steps like cold, sucking mud.

  The trail shortly emerged from the last traces of pine forest into a rocky saddle between two rearing peaks. Wind shoved at us, tugging hair and cloaks and skirts toward the gap. The far side of the notch fell away into a scree-choked, lichen-scarred old rockslide, which tumbled down to meet a swelling sea of ancient forest that cloaked the mountain’s slopes in deep green shadow.

  A woman sprawled among the rocks, her Raverran uniform stained with blood. A musket lay across her lap. Her hands were too weak to lift it, but her eyes glittered feverishly; she was alive.

  “There you are,” she gasped. “Took you long enough.”

  The boy who’d led us here ran up to her. “Thank the Graces, someone’s alive! Where’s the princess? What happened?”

  Zaira strode up to the injured soldier with murder in every step. “Talk,” she growled.

  The soldiers had more mercy. One, a Callamornish woman in her thirties with a brown braid and powerful shoulders, pulled bandages and alchemical salves from her bag to treat the soldier’s wounds. Another offered her water.

  She took quick, grateful sips, but only between words. “Vaskandran raiding party attacked us. Saw a Falconer uniform and targeted the alchemist.”

  “Where is she?” Zaira demanded.

  “I don’t know.” The wounded woman grimaced with pain, held up a finger, and took another sip of water. The soldier with the brown braid busied herself with the salve and bandages.

  “How does it look, Grita?” Braegan asked.

  “There’s a good chance she’ll live, if you let me do my work.”

  “Sorry.” Braegan edged back, giving her more room.

  The wounded soldier grabbed Braegan’s sleeve. “You’ve got to hurry. They can’t be far ahead. The alchemist used some artifice device to protect herself, but it was too powerful—it knocked everyone around her out. Put them right to sleep. The alchemist, too. I was rear guard, and the only one of us far enough back not to be caught in it.”

  Zaira paled at the mention of an artifice device. It must have been Istrella’s flare locket. But it should have flashed a blinding light at her attackers, not put everyone to sleep. A queasy fluttering grew in my stomach; something had gone terribly wrong.

  “And Princess Brisintain?” Braegan demanded.

  “They grabbed the alchemist and looked like they were trying to decide what to do about all the sleeping people, so I shot one. That got them running, but they shot back, and here I am.” Her eyes closed in pain, then opened again. “But then the sleepers woke up. A handful of Vaskandrans first, who’d been almost out of range, but I pretended to be dead and let them pass. Then the princess and the rest of them, ravening after like bloodthirsty hounds. They can’t be more than ten minutes ahead. You can overtake them if you hurry.”

  I stared. “Bree went charging off into Vaskandar?”

  “To get the alchemist back. Yes. She thought they could catch them just across the border, before they ran into anyone, since the Vaskandrans were hurt and dragging a prisoner.”

  I covered my face. Graces, that was so like Bree.

  Unshed tears burned my eyes. Later. I had to hold together. Someone had to take com
mand now, and decide what we were going to do—a decision that could lead to the deaths of everyone here, if things went wrong.

  And I knew who that had to be.

  “Lady Amalia?” a Raverran officer asked, tentatively.

  Zaira stood poised at the apex of the pass, her hair wild in the wind, staring down the long slope into the rolling forests of Vaskandar as if she’d like to burn the whole country to ashes.

  She looked back over her shoulder at me; rage carved her face into hard planes. “You heard the soldier. We can catch up if we go after them now.” She slammed a fist into her thigh. “But if we let them go, she’ll be gone. You take a look down there and tell me we have any chance of finding her if we let the trail go cold.”

  I stood beside her and gazed out across the rolling forest, spread out below over the skirts of the mountains. The knife-thin scar of a footpath zigzagged down the slope below the rockslide, vanishing into the devouring darkness of the forest.

  I was the Cornaro heir, the linchpin of the treaty that bound Callamorne to the Serene Empire, and the cornerstone of our alliance with the Crow Lord of Let. And Zaira herself was even more crucial to the Empire’s defenses. We were too valuable pieces to lose for any reason. The doge had ordered me not to take risks, and I had no doubt that if my mother were here, she would forbid me to cross the border.

  But Bree was a princess of Callamorne. She was also too valuable to lose. And imperial military policy was to take extraordinary measures to prevent the capture of Falcons. From what the wounded soldier said, they were only minutes ahead of us. We would barely have to cross the border at all.

  “We have to send people after them,” I said. “There’s no doubt of that. The only question is whether you and I are going, too.”

  “Unless there’s a Witch Lord hiding right across the border, there’s nothing within five miles I can’t handle.” Zaira gestured out over the forested valley below. “If you send them alone, they could die and fail, and we’ll lose Bree and Terika, and you and I will be no safer sitting here unprotected. If I go with them, nothing can stop us.”

  Past the foot of the mountain, some ways to the east, a cleared area of fields and a cluster of roofs broke the monotony of the forest. Wisps of smoke rose above the village. A castle reared black towers above the forest on a foothill farther to the east, but it was too far away to be a threat. To the west, smoke rose from a great gray swath of tents in a distant encampment of Vaskandran troops that filled a river valley below one of the major passes, but that was miles away. This section of the Witchwall Mountains was too rugged for war.

  Kathe had said the roads were protected by treaty and should be safe even with the Lady of Thorns’ word of death laid upon Lochaver blood. There might well be scouts patrolling the roads, or traders and hunters traveling them, but nothing more than that. Even if we left someone behind with the wounded woman, we had twenty fresh soldiers to add to Bree’s remaining half dozen.

  If we ventured a few minutes into the forest, no one would know. And Zaira was right; with a fire warlock along, nothing could stop us.

  I slid a hand into my satchel, curling my fingers around Marcello’s button. “I can’t believe I’m considering this,” I said.

  “We don’t have time to consider it, Hells take you.”

  I nodded, and spun to face the waiting soldiers.

  “Two of you stay with the wounded and check for more survivors. The rest of us will venture a short distance across the border to see if we can catch up and get Princess Brisintain and Terika out of there. If the trees start trying to kill us, or animals attack us, or anything makes us think the Witch Lord knows we’re there, we’ll leave immediately. We will turn around before we reach the valley floor. Understood?” Salutes and grim nods met my order. “Let’s go.”

  I scrambled down the rockslide with the others, picking up more scrapes, determined not to hold us back this time. The Vaskandrans must have lost a great deal of time trying to make their way down the rocks with an unwilling prisoner and wounded companions; if I had to fling myself down and bounce off every stone on the way, it would be worth it to gain ground on them. Soon we made it to the place where the cut through the mountains widened, and a dirt track broke away from the slide to switchback down a grassy slope and into the woods.

  These were not the fig and olive trees of Raverran gardens, nor the stately cypresses of the imperial countryside. They even bore little resemblance to slender pines of the Callamornish hills. These were old, wild trees, with trunks broader than doorways and rough bark creviced deep enough to hide a hundred secrets. Moss crept up the trunks. Branches thick as a grown man hung above the path, gnarled and reaching, blocking out much of the light and filtering down green, shifting shadows.

  They had presence. A dense, silent watchfulness hung about the forest; I could feel it palpably as we approached. All forests were alive, but this one was awake. I shivered.

  Despite our headlong pace down the mountainside, we stopped when we came to the verge of the woods, without a word passing between us. The air wafting out of the forest was different. Colder, damper, and it carried a heady scent: mossy growth and moldering leaves, fresh pine and decaying wood, death and life wound together.

  Zaira raised her fist. “All right, you rotten old wrecks. You may have swallowed my friend, but I’m going to shove my arm down your throat and pull her out so hard you’ll cough up your own bollocks.”

  “Did you just threaten the trees?” Braegan whispered, as if afraid they’d hear him.

  “Hells, yes. Bastards had it coming.” And she strode into the forest. The rest of us followed, the soldiers quickly fanning out around her.

  At once, everything went silent. Not the dead silence of an empty room, but a silence full of a thousand sounds too soft to break the threshold of hearing. The silence of movement only just stopped, and ready to spring into action again; the silence of a pause between bites, or a breath between screams.

  The path widened when it entered the forest, from a narrow single-file track to the full breadth of a wagon road. Its width might be so that woodcutters could use carts to transport felled trees, but I had the feeling that in Vaskandar, they kept the brush cut back for another reason. When my steps wandered from the center of the road once, a tree branch creaked and strained toward me, twigs stretching and rattling.

  “Stay on the path,” I said, nerves cracking my voice. “Whatever you do. I’ve heard the roads are safe—or used to be, anyway.”

  Braegan nodded, drawing his pistol. “Aye. People live here, after all, and traders pass through. They say if you keep to the roads, it’s not much more dangerous than a forest in Callamorne.”

  He didn’t sound convinced.

  The trail began a series of switchbacks down a steep, forested slope. I peered down through the trees, hoping for a glimpse of Terika and her captors farther below. I almost thought I’d seen something when the sound of crashing brush came from down the path, and a familiar voice issued blistering curses.

  “Bree!” I cried, and broke into a run. Zaira and the soldiers quickened their pace around me.

  But then the smell hit my nose. Blood, and worse. I threw a sleeve across my face, gagging.

  “Amalia?” Bree called. “Graces’ sakes, what are you doing here? Get out!”

  I could make out a number of figures through the trees now. Only one was moving. The underbrush, however, heaved and thrashed like a living thing, and the pines swayed and groaned.

  “Your Highness!” Braegan shouted. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” Strain stretched Bree’s voice taut to the point of breaking. “But if you value your lives, don’t step off the path.”

  The soldiers in front of me slowed their rush to an abrupt halt. In half a breath, I saw why.

  One soldier hung from a tree branch that speared through his eye and out the back of his skull, body swaying gently. Another stretched in rigid, frozen agony across a tangle of briars that pierced hi
s chest in half a dozen places. Others sprawled at the roots of burly trees with clearly broken necks or lay in scattered pieces with roots and vines still wrapped around their bloody limbs. The thorns that overran this part of the forest glistened red with blood.

  My stomach lurched. Around me, the soldiers swore.

  Bree knelt in the middle of it all, covered in scratches. The brambles grabbed at her from every direction, but she kept them at bay with her bare hands. Every branch she seized snapped off easily, and each tendril that touched her recoiled as if she were on fire. Vivomancy.

  “Bree!” I started toward her without thinking, struck with deep horror at seeing her in such a place of blood and death. But Zaira grabbed the back of my coat, even as the tree branches overhanging the road strained in my direction.

  “Oh, no you don’t. Not unless you want to get gutted.”

  “Your Highness!” Braegan ran his thumb across his musket hammer, but guns would be useless against this enemy. “How can we get you out of there?”

  “Stay there, and get ready to catch me,” Bree commanded.

  And with that, she staggered to her feet. Black briars caught and clung to her, straining to pull her down, cutting her tattered clothes.

  Bree closed her eyes and let out a great, angry roar. The bramble vines clutching at her went suddenly limp, falling off her like wet spaghetti.

  A couple of the soldiers gasped, and one backed away. Bree’s secret was out.

  Bree hurled herself toward the road, more than half falling. Thorns grabbed for her but withered when they touched her. She rolled through them on her shoulder until one reaching arm stretched past the edge of the path; Braegan caught her hand and hauled her the rest of the way to safety, trailing dead branches.

  Bree lay in the road, gasping and pale. I dropped to a knee beside her, my gut still twisting in revulsion at the mangled bodies all around us, taking in gulps of relief that she was alive along with the terrible stench of death in the air.

  Grita dropped down by Bree’s foot, which was twisted in entirely the wrong direction. Hells, there was nowhere safe to look except Bree’s face.