Saying their goodnights, Xaron and Nomusa closed themselves into their bedrooms. I, however, wasn't ready for sleep yet. Despite my better judgment, I drew a cup of wine from the barrel that our last loftmate, Corin — who worked as a cartwoman rather than a Finch — had claimed for us, then moved to the bay window. The festival lights glittered in the inner and outer demes of the city, as both inside and outside the wall the celebration continued. Bonfires, pyr lamps, and torches illuminated the city from below, while the green light of the radiant winds and the three moons, full as they were every Radiance, shone above. The gray Pillars rose ominously from the demes, the magic-forged columns shadowed specters in the darkness. Beyond the city wall, a gargantuan bonfire burned, so large I wondered for a moment if it were spreading.
But as I swirled my glass, my thoughts drifted. The sense of disquiet that had filled me of late, a cloud that followed we wherever I went, rose in me once more. Amid the hunt earlier, it had dampened so that I could almost forget about it. But it had always been there, simmering beneath the surface.
I feared to think what it meant.
Secrets had been my pursuit for as long as I could remember. Ever since I'd been old enough for Mother to bring me to the markets, I'd listened avidly, sieving conversations for scraps of scandal.
By the time I was five, I'd learned the patricians' most salacious stories from the washerfolk. More people should be wary of washerfolk — they always know your dirty laundry.
By the time I was eight, I’d sought more dangerous tales — street-side scams, moneylender muggings, even a few political bribes. I'd return home after a long, dusty day, and illustrate my hard-earned stories in colorful detail to my brothers for their amusement.
By the time I was twelve, I'd sold my first secret.
At fifteen, during the Calling when adolescents decide their life's work, I had named myself a Finch after the Order of Verifiers, a long-disbanded branch of the government, to carry on their mission of exposing truth wherever deception obscured it. When I'd set to the work a year later, I found myself more often chasing profit than justice. But always, I'd told myself it was in the eventual pursuit of that noble goal.
Standing atop our derelict tower, staring over the glimmering city, I wondered what had come of my nine years of striving. Perhaps it had never been about the truth. Perhaps it was the power of it, of hunting down a story and claiming its truth for your own. But the hunt could only thrill for so long.
And it was hard to believe it mattered when I couldn't even find Thero's murderer.
A sudden sound yanked me from my thoughts. It took me a moment to recognize it. Not since I was a child had I heard it, for it only sounded in the direst circumstances. It blared over the rooftops and poured into the reveling forums and silent alleys. It vibrated in my chest and shook all other thoughts away.
The shell horns of the Laurel Palace called over Oedija, solemn and forlorn.
Three warnings came by the horns. The first, for fire. The second, for war. And the third, for a death.
Fire was likely. With wood buildings common along the peripheries of the city, the bonfires of Radiance posed a grave danger if mismanaged. The fire that burned in deme Thys beyond the wall seemed a likely candidate.
War, beyond rare skirmishes, had not been known in recent history, not since the Concordance of the Four Realms. The Bali ishakas to the east quarreled among themselves. The Qao Fu jaitin to the northeast remained isolated, their power waning. The Avvadin Imperium to the south seemed content with conquering their southern neighbors along the Rift.
The horns sounded twice, then a third time. I had heard this call once before when I was young. I'd clutched to my father's robes and asked him if we were safe. He'd taken me into his arms and cradled me back and forth. Three horns are nothing to fear, Little Songbird, he'd murmured. Three horns are nothing to fear.
As the echo of the horns died away, the late festival-goers below pantomimed their distress. Some cried into their hands. Others clutched their heads and fell to their knees, disregarding the mud that caked the street. Some just stood staring up, as if asking the gods how this could happen.
I closed my eyes. The fading vibrations of the horns seemed to shake me awake after a troubling dream, filling the gaps that had formed in me over the past two and a half years.
Three calls of the horns announced that Despot Myron Wreath was dead. Three horns made me remember what it was to be a Finch.
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Heir of Empire
Scions of Flame and Stone: Prequel
As Harald entered the throne room of the Charred Citadel, fear and greed waged war inside him. No one liked coming before the Premier. Particularly not in the throne room. Particularly not after he’d been sitting judgment all day and was likely to be in a punitive mood. But Harald was familiar with the battle, and his stride didn’t falter.
Behind him came two other sets of footfalls. The woman and girl he had in tow stood as good a chance of pleasing the Premier as Harald was wont to get. Outside the tall windows, the ash fell lightly over Estanfal, and the sky was more orange than gray.
As fine a day as any for a mother to sell her daughter.
Straight-backed in his chair, cradled in the midst of the skull of a conquered Tyrant, sat the Premier. He had no other name that Harald knew of, no other title, and he’d been in his service as a Courier for five years. The Premier was old, and had ruled Estanfal on the Queen’s behalf for as long as Harald had been alive, and as long as his now-dead parents before him. Likely he’d continue to rule after Harald was dead.
It paid to be in the good graces of such a man.
Stopping a dozen feet from the Premier, Harald bowed low and touched his hand to his forehead in the gesture of respect. “Premier.”
“Courier Harald.” The Premier’s voice was cool and measured. “I hope today’s candidates will be better suited to my specifications than yesterday’s.”
Harald hid a wince as he rose and stepped aside. “As do I, Premier. Please, allow me to show you them. Step forward, you two.”
The woman and girl shuffled forward, fear plain in their expressions. Harald hardened himself to it. “Don’t just stand there,” he ordered. “Show the Premier some respect.”
The woman and girl bowed hurriedly, the woman mumbling something unintelligible.
“Speak up!” Harald barked at them.
The woman cringed, but she brought herself upright, chin raising almost to be defiant. There was some fire in her after all.
“Begging your pardons, ma’lord,” the woman said to the Premier. “I don’t know the right way to treat a man such as yourself.”
“Do not trouble yourself over it. I am no lord, merely the servant of our Queen. You may just call me Premier. And what are your names?”
The Premier’s tone had shifted, from annoyance to interest. Harald didn’t yet dare hope, but stood silent, watching.
“My name is Mila, ma’lor — Premier. And this is my daughter, Telasine. Everyone calls her Telly though.”
The Premier nodded, studying them in silence. Harald kept his eyes on the mother and daughter. Perhaps the Premier noticed how pretty they both were, even if the mother was well past her prime years, and they both had the poor manners of the peasantry. But they had good teeth, and all knew that good teeth meant good health.
He pretended to glance out the windows to glimpse the Premier's expression. As usual, there was little to read in it. His face, scaled and flattened after countless years of close exposure to the Queen, had always been difficult to read, and all the more in the shadowed throne room.
The woman Mila dared to speak again. “She's very pretty, isn't she, ma’lor — Premier? She's quiet, my Telly, and she don't talk back much. Very well behaved.”
Harald hoped her babbling wouldn't ruin his chances. He found himself scratching at the scales on his neck, a nervous habit. But as the Premier
seemed intent on the pair, he didn’t dare intervene.
A hundred peasants had come in before them, mothers and daughters come to be shown before the Premier. None of the girls were older than fourteen, by the Premier's request. The request had been vaguely worded, spread by Harald and the other Couriers, and discretion had been advised. Having told women of the Premier's request, looked them in the eyes as realization dawned on them, Harald knew what the women assumed to be their girls’ fates. Yet they kept bringing them in.
Gold, he mused, was worth its weight in daughters.
The Premier shifted. “Let me see her smile.”
Harald turned his gaze back to the girl. For all her wheedling, the mother did not speak falsely. Young as she was, the girl was a rare beauty, with glossy black hair flowing thick down her shoulders, framing a finely featured face near perfectly symmetrical. Her peasant smock couldn't hide the hint of a woman's emerging figure beneath.
The girl bared her teeth, and they gleamed with the light of the braziers lining the room. White, and perfectly straight. It was more a snarl than a smile, to be sure, but some men liked that in a concubine. And from the wording of his request, Harald would have bet an earl's estate that the Premier was one of them.
He glanced at the Premier again. The Premier rarely showed emotions he didn't mean to. So as he smiled, Harald felt anticipation clench his gut. If this interview continued to go well, he might just have an earl's estate to do with as he pleased.
“Those are fine teeth,” the Premier said to the girl. “Good teeth are a sign of good health, did you know that?”
The girl stared at him with a baleful gaze until her mother roughly prompted her. She nodded reluctantly.
The Premier graced her with a smile, his own teeth yellow and misshapen, then glanced over at Harald. “Courier, I am pleased with this girl. If you would escort her to her new rooms, then show the mother her remittance for her sacrifice.”
Harald nodded, then moved to do his bidding. It wasn't his place to question the Premier. Even he had desires he had to sate. If the mother was tearless, perhaps she looked forward to her reward. Even the girl won something here. She'd live in luxury and leisure, far better than she would have as a peasant.
He didn’t have to feel guilty for the warm glow of victory spreading through his chest. All benefited from this arrangement. Himself most of all.
“This way,” he said to the girl, and led her down the dark corridors of the Citadel.
The summons came late that night.
Harald stood in the throne room, waiting. The Tyrant’s skull stared at him from its hollow eyes. Estanfal lay dark, the ashfall robbing it even of light from the moons and stars. The throne room was cast in flickering illumination by two braziers before the throne.
He scratched at the scales on his neck and shifted closer to one of the braziers to warm himself. It wasn't the first time the Premier had summoned him from his bed, but he wished he'd at least not make him wait so long in the cold dark.
The Premier came some time later, dressed in the same red-and-gold robes as he had worn earlier. At his shoulder walked his protector, a hulking shadow of a man in iron half-plate and dark clothes, with a roughly shorn beard and ragged hair to match. Ven never left the Premier's side that Harald had seen. He wondered if he watched him bathe, or on the chamberpot, or making use of his new young concubine. The concubine you brought to him, a part of himself mocked.
“Courier Harald,” the Premier greeted him. “Your promptness is appreciated.”
Harald bowed, touching his hand to his head. “Service is my honor, Premier.”
“And you will be rewarded for it. I am well pleased with the girl.” The Premier paused, a pregnant silence. “But to secure your reward, you must complete the task.”
A shiver ran through him. “And what task would that be, Premier?”
The Premier studied him. Even in the dimly lit room, his eyes had a faint gleam.
“In truth, the girl is not the one I am after. The mother has another, a female babe, whom I seek to possess. Your task is to take the babe, kill the mother, and cover it up as an accident.”
Harald couldn't find his tongue for a moment. He didn’t want to meet the Premier's impassive gaze. Yet to look away now, to falter in any way, might be a fatal mistake. He feared even to ask why. Some things you were better off not knowing, especially where spilled blood was concerned.
“It will be done, Premier.”
“Good. Do nothing for a seven-day. When her end comes, her neighbors will believe it her due, for selling a daughter for gold.”
Harald nodded. The question burned on his tongue. But he had not stayed alive as a Courier for six years without learning a few lessons. Never ask more than you’ll pay, as the Courier who had mentored Harald had often said. He’d said it to Harald nearly everyday for his first month as Courier.
He’d died in Harald’s second year. Harald had never tried finding out how. He’d learned his lesson.
He bowed again. “As you say, Premier.”
The first thing Harald heard when he entered was her whimper.
Swallowing hard, he ignored her and scanned the room around him. Bile, sour and hot, burned the back of his throat at the miserable conditions of the hut. Even without the chairs knocked over and the woman struggling to break free of her captor, it seemed a place barely fit for a home. Dirt floors. Straw and mud walls. Wind whistling in poorly patched holes.
His lips curled. Ashes only knew what she’d done with the Premier’s gold. Like as not, she’d been robbed as soon as she’d left the Citadel. Estanfal was rarely fair, and the least of all to whores who sold their daughters.
On the slat of wood and straw that served as a bed lay a bundle of cloth. Harald nodded at the bundle. “You didn't kill it, did you?” he said to the rough who held the woman.
“Now, now, Harald. You know me. Why would I do that?” Blackeye grinned and wrenched hard on the woman he held, evoking a fresh muffled sob.
Harald clenched his jaw. He’d chosen Blackeye for this task for a reason. He just had to keep that in mind, and bear his cruelty for a little while longer.
“Didn't even wake to its mother's cries,” Blackeye continued. “Guess it knows she'd have sold her one day.”
Mila unwisely broke into a fresh struggle, which the rough put a quick end to with another blow.
Vomit threatened to come up again, and Harald swallowed hard. “She's being punished enough,” he croaked. “Leave her to her misery.”
The rough eyed him. “Turning soft, Courier?”
Anger finally forced the sickness down. “Would you like to find out?” Harald offered coldly.
Blackeye met his gaze for a moment, then looked away and shrugged. “What’s the Premier want with this old hag, anyway? With that pretty daughter he just bought, why put his prick anywhere else?”
Never ask more than you’ll pay, Harald thought. A sickly smile worked its way onto his lips.
“He wants her to disappear, and to take her babe.”
The rough snorted. “What's he want with a whore's whelp?”
“You'll have to ask him yourself. You lined the place with oil?”
“Think I had time to do that while holding this bitch? You're thicker than I thought.”
Harald's smile only grew wider.
Blackeye noticed. “Something funny, Courier?”
He ignored him. “Get her up and move her to the door.”
The rough's eyes narrowed, but he shoved the woman toward the door, the knife still to her throat. The woman’s whimpering grew louder. Harald stood a few paces inside the hovel so that the pair had to squeeze past him toward the entrance. The woman's eyes were wide and pleading as they met his. Harald glanced away. His hand reached inside his cloak. His breath came quick, his muscles bunched.
Blackeye glanced at him and his eyes went wide. Too late — Harald's knife darted in once, twice, thrice into the gaps in his hard leather jerkin. The roug
h lurched back, releasing the woman as he fell to his knees, flailing with his knife in front of him. But as blood poured from his side, the fight was quickly going out of him.
Harald looked from him to the woman, who stared wide-eyed at him. Her back was to the door, but she hadn't tried for it, terror rooting her in place. Though his stomach turned and heart pounded and sweat trickled down his back, he hardened himself for his next words.
“You heard what I must do. I have to take your babe.”
A whimper escaped her trembling lips. She said nothing but stared at him, wide-eyed, knowing what must come, unable to stop it.
But though she said nothing, he felt his resolve unspool.
“It will be my life if I don't deliver her,” he found himself saying. “But you need not die.”
Her gaze did not shift. Harald clenched his jaw, wondering if fear had pushed her beyond understanding.
“Run,” he told her. “Leave here and never come back. If you show yourself in Estanfal, it will be both of our heads.”
Her eyes flickered to his hand, still clutching his bloody knife. Harald hid it behind his back and gestured to the door with the other.
“Go,” he said roughly. “You know the alternative.”
The woman's chest moved with her rapid breaths. Her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips. But still, she didn’t move from the door. Harald's hopes began to sink.
“I gave up one daughter,” the woman said in a whisper so soft he could barely hear. “I sold her like a lamb. I won't give up another.” Her eyes bored into him, pleading. “She's my life, my only one now. I can't leave her.”
Dread, disappointment, fear — all gave way to his anger, rising red and hot in his chest. His face pulled back in a snarl as he revealed his bloody hand again. “Ashes take you then!” he spat. “You don't deserve to live!”
As he stepped forward, she cowered from him, but she didn’t fight, didn’t run, but waited for the red knife to fall.
The Worlds of J D L Rosell Page 13
