by Sam Sykes
Of the young man before him, of the sword in the scabbard, he was only barely aware.
He took another step forward. Steel hissed against leather. And a step became a leap. Lenk caught the sword’s pommel and shoved the blade back in the scabbard. His hand went for the Sainite’s belt and slipped into his coat. The soldier’s buckler caught him in the chest. He fell back, feeling the dagger from the belt come with him.
The Sainite reached for his sword again. Lenk lunged, darting low as the sword flashed over his head. He flipped the dagger in his grip, pointed it upward, and drove.
Hard.
He felt warm life dribble out onto his hands. He felt a great weight go stiff and then settle on the blade. When he released the weapon, the Sainite fell to the ground and lay limp, eyes frozen wide as though he still hadn’t realized what was going on even as the dagger was jammed up beneath his chin.
Lenk was a little surprised himself.
By how quickly at it had all happened, how very naturally it had all felt. Not a life taken, just a reflex, something neither of them had had any control over. Like a dance and only Lenk knew the steps. So he had done them.
And this man was dead.
It was just that easy.
This wasn’t the first man he had killed. Nor even the first man who might not have deserved it. It should not bother him. He was doing this for a cause. It would all be worth it in the end.
And yet…
“Fuck,” he yelled. “Fuck. Why’d you have to do that?” He wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
He shut his eyes as he stepped over the body and pushed the door open to check the interior. Just inside, Miron, wearing the shape of the soldier, was sitting on the seventh step of a wooden staircase.
Just smiling.
“Would you like to know?” the creature asked.
“Who are you?” Lenk replied. “Who are you, really?”
“Not that.” The creature gestured to the dead soldier. “Would you like to know his name?”
Lenk would not.
“Would you like to know who he was? What he wrote in the letters he sent back home? Would you like to know if he had a woman here or in another country somewhere far away? Would you like to know if they ever talked about marriage? Would you like to know if he ever promised her he would come back?”
With each word, the creature’s grin grew broader, and the creature’s eyes grew wider. When he fell silent, at last, his smile was too big for his face, eyes too wide for their sockets.
“Would you?”
Lenk shook his head. “No.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t.” The creature’s smile did not fade. “What difference would it make, anyway? You’d still be a murderer.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Lenk said. “It wasn’t murder. I had to get past him to stop you and whatever you’re planning.”
“What if I’m not planning anything?”
Lenk stared at him. “Are you?”
The creature’s grin grew a little broader. “Yes.”
Lenk reached down, took the dead soldier’s sword, and stepped forward. “Sometimes you have to kill to make things better.”
“I happen to agree,” the creature replied. “And so does Khoth-Kapira.”
“You were in league with all of this. I knew it. That makes this man here”—Lenk gestured to the dead soldier—“and everything else I’ve done worth it.”
“Who are you trying to reassure, Lenk?”
“No more questions. No more games. No more running.” Lenk pointed the blade at the creature and took another step forward. “Don’t even bother explaining what the point of all this is. It ends now.”
“In whose name?”
Lenk flinched. “What?”
“You claim that all the death, all the dying, is worth it. Who gets to decide that? You? Me? A God? When those dead people go to heaven, will they be reassured that they died for a good purpose? Will their widows understand? Will their children?”
“I don’t know.”
“Faith is a valuable thing, Lenk.” The creature rose up to its feet. Its grin shrank to a razor-thin smirk. “If you can’t trust yourself, trust that someone here knows what they’re doing.”
The creature whirled and rushed up the stairs. Lenk was after it in an instant, though for all the good it did him he might as well have waited. The creature was fast. Inhumanly fast. He took the stairs six at a time on legs that stretched with each step, leaping up the steps and disappearing into the building’s upper reaches.
Lenk lost sight of it within seven breaths.
And seven breaths later, he heard the screaming.
Three short cries punctuated by three short gurgling sounds and three bodies hitting the floor. Lenk saw the blood weeping down the steps before he even made it to the landing of the first storey.
More Sainite soldiers lay twitching on the ground, hands clutching swords and slit throats as they bled out onto the floor. Lenk was almost tempted to ask which way the creature had fled. Somehow, he doubted they’d be of much help.
The groan of wood and iron caught his attention, the door swung open ahead. He rushed in after the creature and found only a small wooden room, bare of anything but draped crates and rotting furniture.
And a tall, slender woman at the window.
She looked over her shoulder at him, jaw agape in astonishment beneath her hood. A Jackal’s hood, Lenk recognized. A massive crossbow rested against the windowsill, scope sighted down at the Meat Market. This was the woman from the Souk all those days ago, Lenk realized. The one who had nearly killed him and Kataria.
That would worry him more had he not been struck by a bigger concern.
Where the hell is the creature?
He heard the door groaning again. He whirled around and saw a Sainite soldier—or what appeared to be one—standing at the threshold, his grin as broad and as awful as the wound in his throat. With a delicate wave, he slammed the door shut behind Lenk.
He heard the sound of a lock clicking into place moments before he heard the sound of a crossbow being loosed, followed by a wrenching scream carried up from the Meat Market.
He whirled. The woman was already running, climbing up a stack of crates to disappear through a trapdoor hidden in the ceiling, the hatch slamming shut behind her, before Lenk even thought to pursue.
Instead, he rushed to the windowsill. The crossbow lay empty there, its sole bolt currently far away and embedded in the throat of the Ancaaran envoy slumped over the mediation table, bleeding out onto the treaties.
A hundred eyes turned up to him. Fifty fingers pointed at him. And a single voice tore through the air.
“Kill the assassin!”
THIRTY-NINE
A HEAVEN OF HIS OWN DESIGN
Dreadaeleon’s father had been a strict Daeonist, the grandson of a convert in Karnerian-occupied land over a century ago.
And he had learned that Daeon’s vision of the life eternal was one of emptiness. To be faithful to Daeon was to know joy by leaving behind guilt, worry, and desire to become one in the Conqueror’s eternal army, to stand perpetually vigilant for the moment when Daeon’s forces would sweep the land clean for Him to step upon.
At around four years of age, Dreadaeleon started to doubt his father. It seemed odd that such a fate would be considered desirable enough to wake up before dawn to pray to a God that he could neither see nor hear. At five, Dreadaeleon’s magic had started to manifest itself, and his doubts as to godly powers had grown.
By the time he was six, his father had given him to the Venarium in exchange for twenty-five gold coins and Dreadaeleon had no doubts as to whether or not Gods existed.
But he often thought of heaven. He often wondered what it looked like to happier people.
He doubted that the houn of The Sleeping Cat bathhouse was it.
But it was probably close.
Incense smoke hung in the air in soft blankets, mingling with steam from the distant priva
te rooms. Curtains of red and purple fell in cascades from polished mahogany walls. The Djaalic woman who came out from the hall at the end of the houn to greet him was very clean and pretty.
He couldn’t remember how he had gotten here.
“Ah, young foreign master.” The woman offered a deep bow. When she rose, her silk robe hung off one shoulder. “I am thrilled beyond words that you have returned to us so soon. Have you come far tonight?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was weak and dry in his throat. The incense smoke tasted so sweet in his nostrils.
“Mm. Such can be the effect of our various poets. Would you like to see a new one tonight?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Ah. You wish to see—”
“Liaja,” he interrupted. “I want to see Liaja.”
“Of course. She awaits you.”
“I have gold.”
“We may discuss payment later. But you are such a sweet young boy for offering.” The woman flashed an impish smirk as she headed back toward the hall. “Would you follow me, sweet boy?”
Boy.
The word echoed in his head.
Boy. Boy. Boy.
Many times. And many times, it became other words.
Boy.
Boy.
Sweet.
Boy.
Tiny.
Boy.
Weak.
Boy.
Selfish.
Boy.
Cruel.
Useless.
Useless.
Useless.
Boy.
Boy.
“I’m not a boy.”
She paused, looked over her shoulder. “Mm?”
“I’m not a boy,” he repeated.
Her smirk became a smile. Something so very warm, so very lovely.
“Of course, my apologies.” She gestured to the candles hanging from braziers overhead. “The light is so poor. I should have remembered that we only serve men here.”
“Yeah. Yes. Men.”
“Would you come with me, then, my dear man? She will be waiting.”
She disappeared into the steamy shadows of the bathhouse.
He followed her.
He could not remember for how long.
The water was hot. Dreadaeleon knew this because she had told him it was so before she had gently tugged him out of his clothes and eased him into the bath’s sunken stone basin.
His body ached. Dreadaeleon knew this because he had not slept for a night and a day. He had only barely remembered to wipe the blood from his nose. The bruises on his face, he could not wipe away.
But although he knew these things, he did not feel them. He could not feel the water cascading down his shoulders and back as she filled a bowl and poured it over him. He could not feel the sting of his bruises or the pain in his body as she massaged his shoulders.
Every ounce of blood inside him was in his head, stewing around that word.
Boy.
“Boy?”
He winced. Struck.
“Are you all right?” Liaja’s words were the water, flowing down him, dissipating into steam. “You’re so quiet tonight. No requests?” He could hear her smile in her giggle as she leaned close to his ear. “Shall I be the Empress Garai tonight, moments before I ascend the throne on the backs of those who bowed before me? Or would you like me to be the slave Atrena, dancing for the Beast of the Wild Wood?”
He opened his mouth to say something. To tell her something. To tell her she was beautiful and that her touch hurt him so much, it was so soft. But he couldn’t think of a reason, so he closed his mouth and pulled his knees to his chest.
“Northern boy,” Liaja whispered, pulling a lock of damp hair from his ear, “talk to me. Tell me where you’ve been this past day. Tell me how you got so filthy. Tell me where you got those bruises.” At his silence, she laid a hand on his cheek. “Northern boy…”
“I AM NOT A BOY.”
The Venarie came surging out of him. The water exploded from the basin in a geyser, striking the ceiling before falling again as droplets of warm, steamy rain. He stood up in the tub and turned to face her, naked and trembling.
As she trembled, too.
What had she looked like when he first saw her on the slaver’s block so long ago? Dirtier, he imagined. Scrubbed, scented, naked as she was now, she didn’t look quite so delicate as she had that day. Her hair was soft. Her skin was soft. Her eyes were wide as she shrank away from him.
She had not known his power. She had not known what he could do.
But she did not cry out. She did not weep.
Even as he did.
“I’m not a boy.” His fists shook at his sides. His tears were lost in the steaming drops of water falling from the ceiling. “I’m not.”
She did not tremble for long. She rose up, instead, and faced him. She was taller than him, he noticed. And soft. Her breasts were soft against his chest. The slope of her belly was soft against the concavity of his. Her legs were soft as she drew a thigh against his. And her voice, her words, her poetry was soft.
He knew this.
“You are,” she said. “You are a gentle, sweet, northern boy. You are strong, but that is not what is important. That strength is for anyone.” She slid her arms about his neck. She rested her forehead against his. “But your softness is only for me, northern boy.”
And suddenly, he felt so very warm, so very pained, and so very, very tired. He sank to his knees with a crash. He wrapped his arms about her legs. And he wept.
“I did something terrible,” he sobbed. “I hurt so many people. I said they shouldn’t be treated like that, like you were, but in the end, I didn’t care. I didn’t care and she was right. I’m useless. I’m selfish. I’m cruel.”
“Hush,” Liaja whispered. She laid her hand upon his head, wound fingers through his hair. “She was wrong. She saw only your strength. She was frightened of it. Some women are.”
“She was… she is…”
“It does not matter who she was.”
Dreadaeleon swallowed hard. He looked up at her. His eyes were blurred from tears.
“I… I did…”
“That does not matter, either.” She knelt down before him. She drew him close to her. Her voice was steam in his ear; her lips were water upon his neck. “What you did, what you can do, this is not who you are. I do not need to know that. I know who you are.” She stroked his hair. “I know you, my northern boy.”
When she rose to her feet, she took him by the hand and led him from the basin and onto the wet floor. She drew him to the bed with the silk cushions and the perfumed sheets that lay at the other end of the room. And there, she reclined. And there, she held out her hand.
“Come, northern boy.”
He did not. Not yet.
He looked at his dirty coat, slung over the side of a changing screen. He went to it and rooted around in his pocket.
“I brought you something,” he said.
“A gift?” She giggled. “Oh, you didn’t have to.” And yet she leaned forward. “What is it?”
His fingers wrapped around something pebble-small and pebble-hard. For a moment, he felt something tell him to let it go, to tell her he had lied. But then he looked at her, at her smile, and felt how very nice it was to see her smile.
Broodvine might have been sanctioned only by the Venarium, but one could get anything in Cier’Djaal if one looked hard enough. He took the broodvine seed out and placed it in his mouth. He focused his thoughts and turned his breath to fire. It burst into smoky life in his mouth.
“Tell me what your favorite scene is,” he said.
“Of what?” she asked.
“Of To Wed and Be Bled. What’s your favorite part?”
She made a show of thinking, leaning back onto her elbows and humming. “The moment where the Emperor sends his guard away and is alone with Liaja, when all the red curtains hang silent and only the statues are left to see them.”
/> He remembered that scene. He remembered that stage.
He closed his eyes and felt the smoke build up in his mouth. He took a deep breath and then exhaled a shimmering mist from his lips. He heard her gasp, but he didn’t hear her footsteps. She wasn’t running. He felt the mist shape itself around him, turned thought to reality, reality to thought.
And then he heard Liaja.
“Oh, northern boy,” she whispered.
When he opened his eyes, it was all there. The red curtains emblazoned with the sigil of the old Karnerian imperial court. The statues of the mighty emperors and empresses of old. The brass braziers burning red and the great gold chandelier hanging overhead.
Her scene.
Their scene.
“How did you do this?” she asked. “What magic—”
He crawled onto her. He tried to focus on how warm she was, on how soft she was. He tried to focus on how perfect the scene was, on how expertly he created it. He tried to focus on how nice she smelled and how very tired he was.
And not on how the Venarium would have him executed if they knew about this or how many people he had killed.
He asked her nothing else. He did not ask her if she was ready as he slid between her thighs. He did not ask her if this was perfect before he entered her. He did not ask her if he was a man as he lay atop her and felt her shudder beneath him and wrap her fingers in his hair.
If she spoke, then he couldn’t hear her as she closed her eyes, laid her head upon the silks and whispered his name.
“Dreadaeleon,” she said, “oh, Dreadaeleon.”
FORTY
THE BREATHS BETWEEN
In the moment between a sword leaving a scabbard and entering flesh, there was a very narrow window of opportunity to appreciate just how badly everything had gone.
Lenk had seen many of these moments. He had a scar for each one.
People were screaming in the Meat Market below. The bubble of humanity turned into a roiling boil, people running toward the exit and being bowled over by the Karnerians running to the square. Through a choir of screams, notes of steel sliding from scabbards rang out in excited harmony.
