The Shattering of the Spirit-Sword Brackish 1

by Sam Farren

  “This looks wonderful,” Father Ira said as his wine was poured.

  It looked as it did every evening.

  It looked like a meal fit for a Princess.

  “Indeed. That will be all,” Father Damir said, dismissing the servants who’d brought the lavish plates in, filled with more than three people could ever eat.

  It was a meal from her childhood. Only the table had been surrounded, then. There’d been ten of them, and that was just the immediate family. Castelle’s grandparents had been there, more often than not. How many times had Layla dined with them, her mothers, too? She used to sit next to Castelle, both in the castle and the temple, until she desperately broke free of the place.

  Until she abandoned Castelle, making her family ever smaller.

  There had been aunts and uncles. Cousins she didn’t care for as much as Layla. Fathers Damir and Ira had often joined them, when dinner was served in the banquet hall, along with a dozen other nobles who took pride in sitting at the table with the Queen, with the Greysers.

  “Why is our table so large?” Castelle asked.

  She picked up her cutlery and clung to each piece tightly.

  “It seemed fitting,” Father Ira said.

  “Because I am a Princess?”

  “That’s right, darling,” he said, pushing a glass of wine towards her. “And because we are Lords.”

  Castelle nodded slowly, dropped her fork in favour of drink, but stopped short of taking a sip.

  “Don’t you think it’s a waste? All these empty seats,” she murmured. “Are they meant to mock me?”

  Father Ira turned to father Damir, who begrudgingly set his dinner and book aside.

  “After the siege, we spent two years on the road. Two years you remember little of, because what came before was so awful, and what followed felt so hopeless. We ate with our hands, like the dirt-covered army around us. We pulled meat apart with our fingers. When we arrived on Laister, it was another two years before the temple could be called liveable. We ate atop a fallen column with a blanket over it, for a time.

  “While we were travelling across the archipelago, running from the rebels, and while we were in the temple ruins, watching it be pulled into something around you, I swore that you would never again live like that. You would never eat like that. The table is so large because you are the last of the Greysers, Castelle, and it will doom the archipelago if you forget that.”

  Castelle drank her wine in a single gulp.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, of course, father.”

  If the air had grown tense between them, Father Damir didn’t let it stop him cutting his venison apart.

  Castelle glanced down the table to escape Father Ira’s gaze. It was only a table, stretching out another eight chairs to her left, finite, ending comfortably within the confines of the room.

  It was just a table.

  “Perhaps it would not feel so empty, were we to have company,” Father Ira suggested. “Your father has struck up quite the rapport with the elder of Caen village. They have a daughter around your age. A little younger, I believe. She’s a beautiful girl, by all accounts, and—”

  Castelle’s fork scraped across the bottom of her plate.

  Undeterred, Father Ira said, “It would be marvellous if we got to entertain again, darling. I think it would do you a world of good.”

  Castelle chewed slowly, holding back the answer he didn’t want to hear.

  Beneath Father Ira’s insistence on pushing her in a direction that would not see her Kingdom freed any sooner was an offer that gave her pause. It had been a long time since outsiders other than new recruits had been let into the temple. It had been a long, long time since she’d been introduced to someone of standing.

  Let her fathers draw in guests. If they considered the elder and their daughter worthy of dining with, perhaps her fathers would listen to them; the outsiders could plead Castelle’s case for her. Reclaiming her Kingdom could become more urgent, in her fathers’ ears, if the elder spoke with grief in their heart for what had become of Fenroe.

  “Fine,” Castelle said.

  “Castelle?” Father Ira asked, leaning over the table.

  “Bring them to the temple. Let them dine with us.”

  Father Ira clapped his hands in delight and called for a servant to bring in more wine. Even father Damir had a second glass. Castelle followed in his example, drinking more than she ate. Father Ira made a thousand plans at once. There would be meals to make, musicians to hire, and they would have to have the place really scrubbed down if they were to have company. They were lucky it was summer. It wasn’t too late in the year to gather bouquets of the brightest flowers.

  Dinner stretched on uncomfortably long. Father Ira hugged her when she made her excuses and left, and father Damir had no particular admonishments for her.

  The sky was pitch black outside, and only stars distinguished it from the depths of the forest. Guards bowed their heads as they passed, and Castelle had faith in her legs following a straight line. All the wine had gone straight to her head and stayed there, swirling, swirling.

  She fumbled with the doors to her chambers, shut them heavily behind her, and stood in the centre of the room, waiting for a maid to scurry to attention. None appeared. Whoever Rhea had found to replace her was either remiss in their duties, or certain they started the next morning.

  It was no matter. Castelle was glad of the solitude. She found her own way out of her shirt and breeches and pulled on the nightdress Rhea had left at the foot of her perfectly made bed.

  Rhea would be through the forest, by now. There were plenty of small villages dotted around its perimeter, offering shelter for the night. The Captain would likely stay, too. The forest was hard enough to navigate in daylight, and not worth thinking about intruding upon until dawn had broken.

  Castelle closed her eyes, but the room refused to stop spinning. A mumbling rose from the hallway as the guards changed shifts, and Castelle left her bed in a fit of frustration. She pushed the bedroom windows open, letting in the cool night air, basking in the sounds of the forest. There were more than dogs, out there. Hares ran between the trees, and frogs gathered by muddy ponds. Some guards claimed they’d seen bears amongst the trees, and others mistook the dogs for wolves.

  Castelle fell on her bed. It wouldn’t be made correctly for weeks, but she rolled onto her side, knocking pillows on the ground. Having someone new around wasn’t a terrible thing. She might even make a friend of the elder’s daughter. She didn’t have to bow to her fathers’ wishes. It didn’t matter how often they were right, how many times their wisdom had saved her life, how hard they’d worked to keep her army together, despite a world turned against them.

  Groaning, Castelle pushed her face into a pillow.

  She was a royal. Arranged marriages were an industry unto themselves. Castelle’s eldest sister married a young Count when she was seventeen, and their engagement spanned more than a decade. If Castelle was to become Queen, she couldn’t push against traditions.

  Something knocked in the main chamber, stopping her thoughts from bleeding into acquiescence.

  Sitting bolt upright, Castelle called, “Rhea?”

  What a ridiculous thing to do. A book had likely fallen flat on her desk. Ignoring the sound and the spike of hope, Castelle laid back down, but couldn’t settle. She slid her legs off the side of the bed, fumbled to light a candle, and reached for the water Rhea had left by her bed.

  Four glasses of wine as dark as night would result in an aching head, come morning. She could at least make the consequences a little less severe for herself.

  She took a sip, and something else fell in her room. Gods. She’d left the window open. Her desk would be in disarray.

  Castelle headed into the main chamber, candlelight humming behind her. The curtains had stopped billowing in the wind, but sure enough, a copy of The Birds of Dusk was on the floor, along with an empty inkwell. Castelle placed the fallen pieces back
on the desk, no damage done, and moved to the window.

  She’d never sleep if things kept thudding all night.

  Something other than the wind escaped the forest. The light of the moon reflected twofold atop a rotting log, and Castelle gripped the sill, leaning out the window. The lights vanished, and a dark shape scampered back.

  “Gods,” Castelle whispered, hanging out the window. “Is that…?”

  The guards’ lanterns were nowhere to be seen. Their patrol had taken them to the other side of the temple, and Castelle had only moonlight to go on. If the shape headed deeper into the forest, it’d become another shadow in the patchwork of night.

  Hiking up her nightdress, she slung a leg out of the window and faltered.

  There was a reason she couldn’t go into the forest. A reason why guards walked an endless circle of the temple, night after night.

  Had dinner not been so turbulent, Castelle would’ve stopped there. One word echoed in her head. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. What couldn’t she do? She was a Princess, meant to be Queen. This was her temple, her forest, her island, her archipelago. Hers, hers, hers. That’s what her fathers always told her, and who were they to ban whole reaches of her Kingdom from her?

  Greyser blood didn’t flow in their veins.

  They were but servants and footmen, compared to her.

  Castelle hurried out the window before the guards came. She caught her feet on the sill, stumbled, but stopped short of falling face-first into the dirt.

  Six glasses of wine. It’d definitely been six.

  The night was still and her feet were bare. The nightdress did little against the breeze, but her blood ran hot, and she was too fixated on the shape between the trees to care about the chill in the air and the dirt beneath her feet.

  Slowly, slowly, she closed the gap between herself and the forest, crouched low. Her heart pounded in her ears. She’d never done anything like this, precisely because she’d always waited for permission, for protection. Running off and explaining the situation to her fathers would do no good.

  The puppy would be gone by the time she returned with a fleet of guards at her heels.

  “Hello, there,” she whispered, grinning from ear to ear. “What are you doing out here? Where’s the rest of your litter?”

  The dog cocked its head, backed away, but didn’t flee.

  Castelle knelt down, twigs and stones digging into her knees, and held out a hand. The dog inched forward, sniffed her, and its tail began to wag.

  It was large, more than an armful, but no older than six or seven weeks. The dogs of the forest were bred from Fenronian Shepherds and Norian Mountain Dogs, part wolf, part bear in appearance. They were a force to be reckoned with, even without the spirits’ aid.

  The puppy rolled in the dirt, head in her lap. It was all fluff and had not yet learnt to be wary of outsiders. Castelle rubbed its stomach. The puppy instinctively knew who she was. It was young, not yet visited by the spirits and unacquainted with assassins, but it understood the forest and knew what Castelle meant to it.

  “Are you lost? Are you hungry?” Castelle asked, getting back to her feet. “There’s meat inside the temple, if you’d like some. Plenty of venison left over from dinner.”

  The puppy yapped in delight and ran circles around Castelle’s ankles. Laughing, she turned on the spot, letting the dog jump up and paw at her nightdress. Forget Brackish. Forget marriages, arranged or otherwise. This was the furthest Castelle had ventured into her Kingdom in years, and there was so much life a few steps from the temple she thought she might cry.

  She had to do something. Had to act. She had to put her Kingdom first, as her family always had. She couldn’t waste away, safe in the forest.

  She grabbed the puppy’s face and rubbed its ears. Her bravery would fade, come morning, replaced with a hangover and a dry mouth, but for now, it was enough.

  “Come on,” she whispered to the dog. “The guards will be back, soon.”

  The puppy belonged in the forest, but it had come to her for a reason. It shuffled over to her side when she turned back to the temple and looked up to her for guidance.

  Castelle pointed to her open window, candlelight washed out by the moon.

  The dog barked.

  An arm wrapped around Castelle’s throat, a calloused hand covered her mouth, and she was pulled into the forest.

  The wind gathered, forcing Castelle back, heels tearing through the rough undergrowth. She didn’t scream. The hand clasped over her mouth was for nothing. Her heart was in her throat, welded in place by fear. The animals of the forest scattered as she was torn through the night.

  She kicked her legs, clawed at the arm around her, but it was all distant, distant. Her body fought while her mind plunged deep below the foliage and dirt, the soft earth and the bones it embraced; the creatures that had returned to the world, who had been given a chance to rot.

  This was it. This was it. This was it! Even in the castle, as a child, there were assassins. They’d come for her parents, her grandparents, her grandparents’ grandparents, all throughout their lifetimes, and they’d followed the road to Laister, had crept through the forest and reached the temple walls time and time again. It had been a fact of life, an inconvenience that led to little more than nightmares, something doomed to repeat over and over.

  But this was it. Repetition wouldn’t protect her, wouldn’t hold her life in its hands so the world could keep throwing threats against her. She was alone in the forest, denied one last chance to scream, and someone was about to put a knife through her throat.

  Where were the dogs? Where were the guards?

  Castelle’s teeth dug into the assassin’s palm. Their grip loosened, but it was incidental. She sucked down a breath, but she couldn’t scream. Her lips trembled, murmuring uselessly.

  Mother, mother, she heard herself say. Mother, mother!

  She’d seen her mother dead on the floor, bleeding out onto the marble tiles, yet Castelle called for her.

  Come back, come back, she meant.

  Where were the dogs? Where were the spirits?

  The assassin stopped to adjust their hold. Ducking down, Castelle slipped free and ran, bolting blindly through the forest, moonlight blotted out by the vast canopy. Branches scraped her arms, her shoulders collided with trees, but adrenaline and alcohol numbed her. It didn’t matter which way she went. The dogs’ territory spread throughout the entire forest, and they’d hear the commotion from a mile off.

  “Please,” she croaked, breathless. “Please, somebody, anyone—gods, I—”

  Her feet were cut to shreds, arms and legs no better. She remembered the would-be assassin’s words, short days ago. Finish the job. Finish the job. Fourteen years later, someone was finally finishing the job.

  Her foot slammed against an arched root. Pain forged new paths through her body.

  She yelped, cry turning into a sob as hands clutched her arms, pulling her back.

  Running hadn’t worked.

  Fighting was all she had left.

  With the last of her strength and sense, Castelle turned on the spot, fists raised, and froze.

  A tree had fallen, days or years ago. In the gap it left behind, moonlight poured through the canopy and made bone gleam white.

  The skull of a stag stretched further than a human face ever could. The bone was polished, not bleached, and antlers rose from it like dark lightning born of the ground. It melded with a mask of black cloth, covering the assassin’s face. Even with their hood pulled up, holes cut out for the antlers, Castelle couldn’t imagine where their eyes were.

  She couldn’t imagine anything looking out from the skull and seeing her. It was empty, empty.

  She took a step back, but the assassin’s gloved hands were tight around her arms. Their fingers dug in, bruising, and they didn’t reach for the knife tucked into their belt, the sword hidden beneath their cloak.

  Castelle froze. She stared at the stag’s skull, certain it was unseeing, unf
eeling. The assassin didn’t falter. Their hand moved to the back of her neck as they slammed her against a tree. She whimpered, but it meant nothing to them.

  Rope burnt her wrists as the assassin pulled it tight.

  Around them, the forest was silent. The wind held its breath.

  “Who are you?” Castelle asked. “What do you want? Please, please tell me. Anything—anything is yours. Just ask it. You know who I am, so—so you know I can grant it, I…”

  The assassin didn’t breathe a word.

  With their hand grasping the back of Castelle’s neck, they marched her through the forest, deaf to her pleas.

  Light broke through the trees as they reached the outskirts. How long had they been walking? Minutes? Hours? Time slurred in the back of her head as bile rose in her throat, burning.

  The assassin shoved her forward, out of the forest, and none followed them.

  Where were the dogs?

  Where was her mother?

  Chapter Four

  The cart lurched with every bump in the road.

  The whole thing groaned, swaying with every step the horse took.

  Castelle’s head pounded. The canvas covering the cart blocked out the sky. There was no way of knowing how long she’d been there, only that it wasn’t long enough for her army to reach her. The cart was small, deep enough to sit upright in, but not without straining her neck.

  Her wrists were bound, but her mouth wasn’t covered. She parted her lips, about to scream, but amongst the sickly fear trickling down her spine, embarrassment took hold. There was nothing she could say that would help her, nothing she could cry that wouldn’t reveal how terrified she was.

  The assassin wouldn’t have left her mouth uncovered, had there been anyone around to hear her beg for help. They were smarter than that. No other assassin had ever reached the temple, much less laid a hand on her.

  Shuffling into the back corner, bones rattling as the cart took on rougher terrain, Castelle pushed her head against the canvas. There was no give in it. It was bound tightly with rope, and though it was old, the sides of the cart wouldn’t yield to pressure.