Shattered Kingdom
Angelina J. Steffort
MK
Shattered Kingdom
First published 2020
Copyright © by Angelina J. Steffort 2020
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Ebook: ASIN B088XW7CVN
Print: ISBN 978-3-903357-03-7
MK
www.ajsteffort.com
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Contents
Map
I. The Order of Vala
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
II. A Court of Deceit
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
About the Author
Also by Angelina J. Steffort
Map
Part I
The Order of Vala
Chapter One
After ten years in the heart of the Calma Desert, Gandrett Brayton no longer noticed the unforgiving wind drying her mouth and driving water into her eyes. She lifted her sword to strike yet again, sweat sheathing her body, top to bottom, like a second skin and making her hands slippery. Sweat—as much as her plain linen tunic and pants were part of the fashion of the roughly two-hundred members of the Order of Vala in Everrun. But the man attacking her with merciless strength wasn’t one of them. His attire spoke of the outside world—a world of childhood memories and wheat fields in the north. Gandrett Brayton swirled her weapon and let it sink into the ground before her, preparing herself to propel her legs up and hit her opponent in the chest. It was a movement that always secured her victory.
But not today.
Today, Everrun’s most proficient fighter found herself flat on her back before her feet could hit home.
Gandrett freed a string of curses, earning a raised eyebrow from the stranger, who, himself, seemed surprised that she was on the ground, and he kept his sword hovering before his chest as if he was waiting for something.
Already calculating her options, Gandrett looked for a weak spot. So far, her opponent hadn’t made even the slightest mistake. Unlike most other fighters, he had kept his distance, delivering blow after blow without leaving his sides unprotected. He hadn’t fallen for her feints, the way the acolytes at the order did, or made the mistake of losing patience. On the contrary, he had parried each of her strikes with elegant efficiency, his toned body moving as if he had never done anything else in his life.
He growled, assessing, as her gaze swept over him. Dark hair, eyes of piercing blue. Light, leather armor good for traveling. And covering his chest was a familiar pattern of burgundy and gold.
Gandrett glanced behind the man, letting her eyes widen as if she had just noticed something there—something other than the familiar sight of the lifeless desert which spread around Everrun in each direction—hoping she could fool him, and gripped her sword more tightly, pulling it down toward her in preparation for her next move. A move which would free her and put the man looming over her exactly where she was now; in the dirt.
But the man didn’t loosen his focus on her. Fast as a biting snake, he set his toes on her arm, forcing her fingers to let go of her weapon, and sneered, “What a waste to keep you locked up here in Everrun.”
Gandrett grimaced. “I’m not planning on staying here forever.” She stilled for a moment, letting him believe she’d given up fighting, and studied the man’s posture—the way he kept too much weight on one leg, a mistake. Then, with trained lightness, she rolled over and kicked into the back of his knees, making him tumble off her arm.
Before he could regain balance, Gandrett picked up her sword and was back on her feet, easing the man’s weapon out of his broad hand with a swift knock of her blade. He leaped out of her reach, fumbling for the knife that was still dangling on his leather belt.
Another mistake—at last.
Gandrett’s blood pumped with familiar heat as she measured how many strikes it would take to defeat him. One—she danced to the side, positioning herself with the wind at her back so the stranger would be at a disadvantage. Two—she lifted her sword above her head, easily staying out of the small knife in the man’s dirt-flecked hand’s reach. Three—she brought the flat of her blade down on the man’s shoulder, forcing him to his knees with a blow that made the metal shudder in its wake.
Four—he was on the ground.
Gandrett loosed a breath, watching him with caution, blade at the ready.
But the man glanced up at her, a grin forming on his lips—not the kind type—and said, “I was beginning to doubt you had it in you.”
For a heartbeat, Gandrett pondered whether he was mocking her, and lowered the tip of her sword toward the man’s throat. But he lifted his hands from the dust, a gesture of peace despite the relentless attacks he had rained down on her.
With a flick of her foot, Gandrett shoved his knife out of reach behind her where his sword was resting between stones.
She had imagined her afternoon differently. Exercise in the training grounds behind the citadel then a run around the outer walls of Everrun. Her usual routine. Not the silent approach of an adept attacker who’d had who-knew-what in mind as she found him snooping around the city walls.
Nobody made it into Everrun without permission of the order. And nobody made it out. That was what Everrun was like. Since her very first day here. And that was what it would be like long after her last breath. Had she not spotted him trying to hoist himself up the unclimbable wall encircling Everrun, he might have given up and starved and dried out in the desert, or—which would have been the faster, more merciful death—he would have been pierced by one of the arrows of the guard.
“You could have just walked up to the front gate and requested entrance,” Gandrett threw at him and earned a shrug. In response, she jerked her chin, beckoning the stranger to get to his feet, allowing him only so much space to move along with her blade as she guided him up. He eyed her with a glacial gaze.
“The Meister will be interested to kn
ow what kind of busybody was hoping to sneak into the priory.” Gandrett stared the man down, ignoring the handsome face those cold eyes were set in. He couldn’t be older than twenty. Twenty-five at the maximum. “Name,” she demanded, her voice as sharp as the wind freeing strands of her chestnut braid.
The stranger shoved Gandrett’s sword aside with a gloved hand, “Tell the Meister that Nehelon is here,” and stepped past her to pick up his weapons.
Gandrett whirled around to block his path and kicked his down-reaching hands off course before he could touch the hilt of his sword.
She ignored his curse at the impact and flashed him her falsest smile. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted.” Then she crouched just enough to reach his weapons herself and collected them from the ground, never turning her eyes away from him and without lowering her sword even an inch.
He pursed his lips and fell into step as she escorted him toward the closest side gate in the wall at the tips of both his and her swords while she repeated the name. “Nehelon.” She wanted to take back the word, hating that the sound of it had rung a bell. Not from the years at the Order of Vala, but from her childhood, which seemed almost like a gray haze in her memory.
Gandrett thought she heard him chuckle and pushed one of the swords against the leather on his shoulder blade just to make him move faster. The sound stopped.
She studied his powerful strides as they walked for fifteen minutes without exchanging another word, even though Gandrett was curious who he might be. A fighter, definitely a warrior. Maybe one of the most skilled she had ever encountered. But what business did he have with the order to sneak up on them? And how on earth had he crossed the desert without even carrying a waterskin or a pack of supplies? The Calma Desert spread for miles and miles in each direction, enclosing Everrun like a circle of death, a zone that isolated the Order of Vala from the rest of Neredyn. Nehelon would have been traveling the rocky, dry land without supplies for days—
Her eyes were still on his long, muscled legs as they marched, each step confident, each movement coordinated, deliberate. Then her view slid up to his back, following his spine up to his broad shoulders.
As if he felt her gaze, he glanced back and smirked. “Better than the boys at the order,” he commented as if her sword wasn’t just a flick of her hand away from slicing through his leathers.
Gandrett considered, for a second, the pleasure of giving her temper free rein, but smoothed over her expression, embarrassed, and denied she already hated Nehelon.
The solid, iron gate creaked open as Gandrett nodded to the guards positioned on each side above on the wall.
“What did you bring this time?” Kaleb, the younger of the two, asked with a simper, almost yelling from the tower-like reinforcements framing the entrance to the priory.
Gandrett’s heart warmed at the sight of Kaleb’s twinkling eyes, and she lowered Nehelon’s sword to fasten it on her belt, then pushed the man forward with her hand rather than her sword.
Nehelon craned his neck to see who had spoken, his dark hair sliding back between his shoulder blades, and whistled through his teeth before he set in motion.
“Don’t they feed you in here?” He gestured at Kaleb’s slim, lanky frame by way of greeting as they stepped through the gate, and Kaleb and the second guard descended from their towers.
Gandrett shoved Nehelon forward, ignoring his provocations, and merely said to Kaleb, “All kind of dirt out there,” as she tilted her head, making clear she meant Nehelon. “I found him snooping around the wall,” she clarified. “He says he wants to see the Meister.”
Kaleb gave Nehelon a look, which Gandrett knew was supposed to be dangerous, as he sized him up, but all Gandrett could see was the soft-hearted boy who she had met that first day at Everrun and trained with for ten years. Nothing about him appeared dangerous besides the black-pointed arrows peeking out from behind his shoulder.
“The Meister is busy around this time of the day,” the other guard said to Nehelon, this one looking as dangerous as he sounded.
Gandrett inclined her head. “I’ll bring our guest to his new quarters.”
Both guards nodded, and Gandrett noticed Kaleb’s mouth twitch.
The Meister wasn’t busy. She knew exactly where in the lush gardens of the priory she would find him.
But Nehelon didn’t need to know where she was taking him. And he didn’t need to know that the ‘quarters’ she had mentioned were the cells in one of the two-story, stone, side buildings framing the main road to the eastern gate. That’s what the order did with unannounced visitors until they could be questioned—not that many ever tried sneaking into the priory. It was common knowledge that there was no way in and no way out unless you were granted passage. That was one of the few things that made Gandrett feel safe in Everrun, despite the ghost town which lay behind the eastern gate, abandoned by its inhabitants over two-hundred years ago when the desert had still been fertile soil and the priory of the Order of Vala had been a place friendly to visitors and open to those in need.
Gandrett guided Nehelon past the citadel, its peaked tower piercing the gray sky like a needle while the thundering sound of water spilling from the roof at its base covered the echo of their footsteps bouncing off the columns that framed the front in a decorative line where the water pooled in a pond as wide as the citadel itself.
Nehelon strode forward, unimpressed by Gandrett’s sword, which was still close to his left shoulder. “That guard…” He jerked his chin to the side, pointing behind him to where Kaleb had probably already climbed back into his tower. “Your sweetheart?”
Gandrett swallowed the violent words she wanted to smash at the obnoxious stranger and forced a smile onto her dry lips. Composure. If Nehelon was supposed to see anything of hers, it was composure. Kaleb was her friend, and she would in no way show the stranger that the boy meant something to her. Part of her training at the Order of Vala was to school her emotions, her hot-headedness. It was the only way to ensure she remained as good a fighter when she was under pressure or emotional strain. And even if the methods used were questionable, Gandrett was grateful that her training ensured she would give Nehelon nothing. The last time she had cried was probably the week she had been torn from her mother’s arms at the age of seven. And she had sworn to herself it would be the last time the politics of Neredyn reached her, had taken something from her—
With a swish of her blade, Gandrett guided Nehelon toward one of the sand-colored side buildings. “It’s open,” was all she said, voice unbothered as he stopped at the narrow, black door, before she shoved him forward.
Even if the image of one of the inhabitants of Everrun escorting a captive with a sword was rare, Gandrett’s fellow acolytes, the priests, and priestesses tried not to gawk as they passed by. But she could feel their eyes on her back as she crossed the threshold after Nehelon, could almost hear the whispers even if the more subdued wind inside the walls was too weak to carry the guessing, the wondering all the way to her ears.
Nehelon didn’t fight when Gandrett beckoned him into one of the two narrow cells crammed at one side of the room the second her eyes adjusted to the darker light.
“Not exactly the palace at Ackwood.” He launched himself onto the dusty cot in the corner farthest from the cell door, lacing his fingers together behind his head, and let his gaze sweep over the shabby interior which filled the room behind Gandrett. “But better than those inns in Nisea.”
Gandrett felt her face change with interest and battled down all flaring curiosity while she shut the iron-barred cell as she asked, “You’re from Sives?” Her voice sounded about as emotional as a sleeping frog. Ackwood, one of the two capitals of Sives. She hadn’t heard recent news about the territory where she was born. If Nehelon was from Ackwood, he might have news about what was going on in the north.
“So now I have your attention,” Nehelon commented instead of answering her question.
Gandrett bit her lower lip from the inside until it h
urt and shrugged. “We don’t get many visitors here.”
To her surprise, Nehelon sat up on the cot, legs still crossed at his booted ankles, his eyes suggesting a challenge. “I am not exactly being treated like a visitor.”
His eyes, blue as the winter sky above Sives, sparked as she stared him down, measuring, weighing, trying to read the man who had fought her as if he’d intended to slit her throat in the end and now behaved more like an annoyed, stray cat. As if he had read her thoughts, he gave her a feline grin.
“So, are you from the north?” The burgundy-and-gold coat of armor on his chest sure suggested he might be from the palace itself. Ackwood. So close to home. Gandrett stifled a sigh. All those years she’d been dreaming of one day returning to her parents’ farm. The thought of it brought back the scent of grains and freshly-cut grass at high summer, of snow and roasted chestnuts in winter. And images of soft hills embedded between ever-white mountains in the west and north-east.
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