Neven’s eyes narrowed. “Why did he care so much about those dirty vermin?”
Lorenz sighed. “If I had to guess, I’d say he feared them for some reason. His hatred was… irrational.”
“Does Aliyev have the support necessary to fix what’s broken and fulfill the agreement with Garenoth—or with any of Ravenwood’s trading partners, for that matter?” Neven watched the ambassador, looking for tells that he might be shading his answers, anticipating what his master wanted to hear. So far, he had seen nothing to suggest Lorenz had been dishonest.
“Crown Prince Aliyev is a smart man, and also sometimes, clever,” Lorenz replied carefully. “He has the family, wealth, and position Machison lacked, as well as the polish of someone born to nobility. He is also a meticulous organizer—single-minded and thorough. All that speaks well to his ability to bring order out of chaos. And yet—”
“What?”
Lorenz frowned. “Aliyev lacks charisma. He is an uninspiring speaker and appears to be uncomfortable in social gatherings. People listened to Machison because they feared him. Aliyev is an able administrator, but he will have difficulty rallying others to his cause. I suspect that the physical mess Machison left behind will be cleaned up long before he has mended fences with the Guilds or their members.”
Neven nodded, processing what Lorenz had said. “Which should mean that Aliyev will be far too busy to worry about us,” he replied. “He’s looking for internal threats. He’ll expect the other League states to try to nibble away at Ravenwood’s advantages, but if we’re careful, he won’t realize what we’re doing until it’s done.”
Lorenz smiled, knowing and treacherous. “I believe fate favors us. Aliyev will be distracted for quite some time.”
“Good,” Neven said. “Do everything in your power to see to it.” He paused. “What’s being said about Kadar?”
Lorenz signaled for the steward to refill his wine. “Kadar is a cockroach. He survives no matter how many times someone tries to step on him. He complained to Aliyev about Gorog’s preferred treatment to the point where I once caught the Crown Prince attempting to sneak out of his own villa to avoid a discussion.” Lorenz chuckled. “He was right—Gorog did get preferred treatment, but Gorog brought in more than his share of revenue to begin with, and he built an alliance with Machison to strengthen his position. As opposed to Kadar, who wanted to be given special favors without earning them.”
Released from his ambassadorial duties, Lorenz spoke with remarkable frankness. “Tamas follows Kadar—up to a point. If you mean to maneuver Kadar to undercut the League, you’ll have to handle Tamas carefully. He’s quiet, but he’s also smart and stubborn. If you’re not careful, he’ll figure out your game and hold your balls for ransom.”
That matched Neven’s assessment and dovetailed with what he had heard from Tagar. “Keep me informed,” he replied. “When you return to Ravenwood, make sure you watch Kadar. I think he can be played, but I don’t want us to find out he’s not quite the fool we believe him to be.”
“I don’t think he’ll exceed your expectations, my lord,” Lorenz replied, finishing the rest of his wine with a satisfied exhale.
“You’re in a position to hear and see things most of my other spies cannot,” Neven said. “If we can bring about Ravenwood’s downfall, we all stand to reap the benefits, as we did with Kasten. But I must not allow Kadar enough room to slip our leash. Do you understand me?”
Lorenz set his goblet aside and gave Neven a foxlike smile. “Absolutely, my lord. I’ll handle it.”
“I thought you might visit earlier. Lovely day, isn’t it?” The thin blond man looked up from where he gathered clippings from the plants that surrounded him. Monkshood, yew, and hemlock vied for space with other equally lethal plants and fungi.
Argus Nightshade set his harvesting knife in his basket and reached out to lift up the flower on a nearby belladonna stalk. “Beautiful, and so potent. The garden’s doing very well this year.”
Neven did his best not to dwell on the fact that human bones doubled as plant stakes to hold Nightshade’s prized specimens aloft. The ground to his right had been newly turned, and if Nightshade’s garden produced exceptional growth, the bodies buried in its beds supplied plenty of fertilizer, as did the blood-soaked rituals he liked to hold at midnight amid the mazes and follies.
“We need to discuss the Balance.”
Nightshade rolled his eyes and came away from the plantings, laying his basket on the path. He gave a vague wave toward a nearby gazebo that offered shade, an unspoken invitation to join him at the table and chairs inside. “There’s a fresh pot of tea,” he said. “I had an extra setting put out for you.”
Neven did not remember this particular gazebo before. Nightshade’s tastes ran to the macabre, and his garden of poisonous and magical plants proved the perfect setting for his dark whimsy. Bleached skeletons dressed in rags kept scarecrows’ vigil throughout the grounds. Mosaics of skulls, vertebrae, and small bones decorated the planting beds and embellished the open-air follies scattered among the flowers and trees. Several evergreen mazes of varying heights sprawled over portions of the gardens and each was ringed by an intricate fence made from human bones.
“Have you built on to the garden since the last time?” He would be damned if he would let Nightshade’s sick decorations affect him.
The blood witch sank down into a chair on the other side of the small table and poured himself a cup of tea. “I’m always building on. Daren’t stop—it’s part of a spell. Price I had to pay for a powerful working. Bad things would happen—can’t have that.” He added honey to his tea and took a long sip.
“Does the Balance hold?” Neven asked, unwilling to get drawn off topic. He understood the source of Nightshade’s power and had no illusions about the fate of the wretches taken for the Cull, either by monsters or by the guards that brought them to the witch’s garden workshop. Perhaps the bone decorations and the carefully posed, mummified corpses were tied up in rituals and spell work—or they were simply a testimony to a man who was seriously unbalanced. Maybe both.
“In Sarolinia? Yes. The Cull has been steady—and as you have requested, we’ve kept the ones we target to the useless and those who won’t be missed.” With his shoulder-length blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and handsome features, Argus Nightshade looked like he should be a herald of the Elder Gods. Even his pristine white robes gave him an otherworldly appearance. Nothing about him spoke of the abattoir or the torturer’s craft. But Neven had seen Nightshade at work, drenched in blood like a vengeful spirit, muttering in long-dead languages and reveling in carnage. Like his garden, Nightshade possessed a haunting, hideous beauty.
“And outside the borders? What of Ravenwood and Kasten?”
Nightshade smiled. “Kasten remains a killing field. I’ve been playing with something new, calling monsters through the Rifts at greater distances than before. Practicing in Kasten, in case you wanted me to do the same in Ravenwood. Think of it! We can draw power for the magic and conjure beasts to run our enemy to ground, all in a single working.”
The blood witch’s enthusiasm for his work made bile rise in Neven’s throat. “Very good,” he replied, hiding his revulsion. “That may indeed be useful. But isn’t such a working putting strain on the Rifts?”
Nightshade put his cup aside. “Like most without magic, you don’t really comprehend the Rifts or the Balance,” he said, condescension clear in his voice.
“I know enough to realize that the Rifts are dangerous, and the Balance might be thrown badly enough askew that even the Cull can’t satisfy it,” Neven snapped.
“The Rifts are a natural phenomenon,” Nightshade countered.
“Are they? Or did blood magic manage to tear a hole in the world so the monsters could crawl through from the Pit?”
“The sources aren’t entirely clear,” Nightshade replied. “And besides, no single Rift is very large. And it’s not as if blood mages leave them open.”
“Can you guarantee that you will always be able to get them closed?”
“That hasn’t been a problem thus far.”
“Thus far,” Neven echoed.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Nightshade sulked. “You benefit from my magic, richly.”
Neven fought the urge to rub the back of his neck. “Yes, I do. It’s not a complaint—it’s a caution. Once torn, few things stitch back up good as new. And what’s to say you—or your brother witches—will always be able to control the situation? You’ve got to open the Rift, summon the monsters—but only so many of them or we’ll all die—and then seal the Rift once more. It could go wrong so easily—”
“But it hasn’t.” Nightshade dropped his sulk to ease into the insincere reasonability he used to “handle” Neven when he pushed for more than the witch willingly supplied. “In all these years.”
“How many blood witches can be sustained before it overwhelms the Balance?”
Nightshade laughed, a cold sound like the ringing of a death knell. “There has always been death enough to sustain the Balance. Always enough no-accounts to feed Colduraan’s maw. Beyond the Rifts—that’s Colduraan’s realm, with his First Creatures, like He Who Watches. It’s a primal force, chaos. The strongest in the universe, since in the end chaos is all that’s left.”
“Elder Gods? Really? Leave the children’s tales for another time,” Neven grated, impatient with Nightshade’s embroidered tales of god-monsters. “Perhaps mastering chaos is a bit beyond mortal reach.” Neven was unwilling to think too hard on what Nightshade had revealed. He hoped his overly dramatic blood witch had spoken metaphorically, poetically, but the chill he felt warned him otherwise. “What can you sense of Aliyev’s mage?”
“Shadowsworn? That old pretender?” Nightshade made a dismissive gesture. “He’s long past his best years. Quite a reputation—and he deserved it in his day—but he’s hung on too long. Should have quit the game at his peak.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I don’t doubt Aliyev thinks Shadowsworn is a prestigious catch. But he’s really too old for the game.”
“Humor me,” Neven said, straining to keep his tone civil. “What is Aliyev’s blood witch doing with his power these days?”
He knew Nightshade used divination and scrying to keep watch on all of his rival witches, though he also suspected that those of real power had ways to block or obscure such efforts. Still, even bits and pieces gleaned around the edges could prove useful in finding the weaknesses of an enemy.
“He’s still conjuring monsters, opening the Rift, but not as often as Blackholt. He might not need to if Aliyev’s guards are killing rioters in sufficient numbers.” Nightshade reached out and plucked a cluster of foxglove from a plant growing near the edge of the gazebo’s stone floor, and toyed with the lethal flowers as he spoke. “I suspect Aliyev has him working small magics—protection charms and warnings, coercion spells, that sort of thing. Trying to get his house in order.” He wrinkled his nose. “Nasty business, what happened with Blackholt. Though I can’t say I’m sorry he’s gone.”
“If Shadowsworn is busy doing his master’s bidding, then we may have an opportunity,” Neven mused. “You told me once that Blackholt conjured some monsters to keep the peasants beyond the wall in line, make sure they didn’t get any rebellious notions in their heads.”
“That’s right. We do the same here, to make sure the townspeople know their place. Reducing their numbers lets the strongest survive.”
“Can your ability to open Rifts at a distance let you add to the Ravenwood Cull?”
Nightshade smiled. “Oh, yes.”
“Then do it,” Neven replied. “Start slowly, and stay away from the rivers—I have plans for those. Don’t do anything too noticeable—we don’t want to draw Shadowsworn’s attention.”
Nightshade snorted. “That won’t be difficult.”
“Confidence is admirable; overconfidence is not,” Neven reproved. “I don’t want this mucked up. Stagger the locations and the kinds of monsters, not too many at once or too close together. The villagers beyond the city walls aren’t ready to riot like the tradespeople and the Guild members. They still feel beholden, maybe even loyal, to their Merchant Princes. Kill enough of them while the guards do nothing, and that will change.”
“I like the way you think,” Nightshade replied. “Given the unrest in the city, it could take a while before Aliyev even notices anything’s gone wrong.”
“I’m counting on it. And when he does, he’ll have to decide what’s more important—getting the city back on its feet to meet the finished goods export contracts, or putting down problems in the countryside that threaten his commodity shipments,” Neven said. “Throw him enough plates to juggle, and something will crash. And once Ravenwood’s in default, Garenoth has the right to renegotiate its agreement. We’ll swoop in and pick up the pieces at a bargain rate. For a tidy profit.”
“This will take some time if we’re not to be noticed, my lord,” Nightshade said, though his attention focused on the foxglove in his hand. “I can begin immediately, of course. But aren’t you concerned about those hunters that escaped from Ravenwood, the ones that were bold enough to kill Machison—and Blackholt?”
“Certainly not!” Neven’s head came up sharply. “They got lucky, and Machison was sloppy. Blackholt’s arrogance was his comeuppance. They’re nothing but outlaws—and I’m certain Aliyev has his guards running them to ground. Don’t worry about them. They’ll be dealt with, and we already know Aliyev’s guards are spread thin in the countryside. You’ll have blood aplenty.”
“Of that, I’m sure,” Nightshade replied with an enigmatic smile that sent a shiver down Neven’s spine.
Chapter Eight
The creature moved across a moonlit stretch of ground not far in front of them. Rigan could not see the monster clearly, but what he made out gave him chills. It looked like a woman until it raised its arms and revealed long talons instead of hands and feet. The being walked with a hunch, like a crone, and as the clouds parted and the moonlight streamed down, he saw its face. Black eyes and pinched features gave it a weirdly bird-like appearance, oddly human and yet definitely… not.
“It’s called a piyanin,” Aiden had told them, reading from a lore book. “It prefers to snatch children or young women who come too close to the edge of the forest, but if it’s hungry enough, it’ll take anything—men, sheep, even full-grown cows. “Some people say it’s a death omen to dream of one, that it can ride your soul and drain your life.”
“How do we kill it?” Trent had asked.
“Use an iron sword to cut off the vestiges of wings it hides in its hunched back,” Aiden had told them. “Stab it with steel and silver, and then dismember it and burn it with salt.”
Rigan did not recall anyone mentioning those long, sharp talons.
“You ready?” Corran glanced at Rigan.
Rigan stared in horrified fascination at the monster. Corran elbowed him and glared.
“Yeah. Ready.” Rigan realized that he must have sounded spooked since Corran’s eyes narrowed as he made a quick assessment to assure his younger brother had not already somehow been injured. Rigan shook his head, and managed a wan smile, hoping Corran would dismiss it as pre-battle jitters.
Across the clearing, he spotted a flicker of lantern light, Trent’s signal to engage. Rigan and Corran ran from cover toward the creature, focusing its attention on them while Trent closed in from the other side.
Corran wielded an iron sword in his right hand, a steel knife in his left. Rigan carried a steel sword, but it was a secondary weapon to his magic. He sent a bolt of blue-white energy crackling toward the piyanin, but it moved aside too quickly, and the bolt singed past its shoulder.
With a hiss, the piyanin leaped high into the air. It came at Rigan with its hind talons, like a falcon about to snatch its prey. Corran lunged, slashing with his iron blade, and connected hard with the piyanin’s left leg.
&n
bsp; The flesh smoked at the touch of iron, and the piyanin gave a deafening shriek. Rigan scrambled back, out of range, and summoned his magic again, this time blasting the monster with a burst of flames that caught in its ragged clothing, burning them to ash as the piyanin screamed and snapped.
Trent and Corran dove forward, one from either side and while Corran slashed the monster’s shoulder, Trent stabbed his iron sword through the piyanin’s hunched back. Rigan sank his sword deep into the creature’s gut before scrambling back, trying to avoid its vicious talons.
The claws caught on Rigan’s sleeve, opening up a deep gash on his forearm. Rigan plunged his sword in again, this time through the piyanin’s ribs. Dark blood flowed from the monster’s wounds, injuries that would have felled anything human. Despite their wounds, the piyanin kept fighting, snarling, and shrieking as it snatched at its tormentors with long, sharp claws.
“The wings!” Corran yelled. “Get the wings!”
“What in the name of the gods do you think I’m trying to do?” Trent snapped. Rigan’s fiery torrent had burned away the bird-thing’s meager clothing and charred its flesh. Without the camouflage of its garments, Corran could see a mound of bone and leathery skin gathered between the monster’s shoulder blades. Blood streamed from where Trent had cut into the wings but mantled as they were, Corran saw no way to cut them from where they joined the thing’s spine.
“Rigan! Hit the wings!”
Rigan scrambled to shift his position to get a clear shot at the piyanin’s back without endangering Corran or Trent. He loosed a short charge of energy like harnessed lightning that struck the piyanin’s wings and sizzled.
Vengeance Page 14
