The Ruin of Kings (A Chorus of Dragons)

by Jenn Lyons

  “Then she’s dead. You’re saying she’s dead.” Dread clenched around my throat. I shuddered and let out a long stream of air. It didn’t make any sense. I knew it didn’t make any sense. Here I was hung up on some woman whom I’d never met and had no idea if I’d even like if I did meet her. I knew it was stupid.

  But it didn’t change how I felt.

  Teraeth raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Technically speaking, so was I at the time. Not everyone who wanders through the Afterlife is on their way to the Land of Peace.” Teraeth seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “But no, as it happens, I don’t think she was dead. Some beings can survive and travel through those lands at will. Were I the sort to place wagers, I would say she’s one of those.”

  “You mean demons? But she can’t be…” I tasted bile. Yes, yes she could be. Xaltorath had been the one who had shown her to me, after all. Still, I rejected the idea. Xaltorath—indeed any demon I’d ever heard of—were all horrific and awful. They were not beautiful.*

  “Demons can freely travel in the Afterlife, but so can gods,” Teraeth said.

  “She’s not a god,” I answered automatically.

  “Oh, because you would know. Aren’t you the expert now?”

  “Anyway, that might explain how you met her, but it doesn’t explain how you knew she was important to me.”

  He made a scoffing sound and looked away for a moment. “That’s one of those questions you probably don’t want to ask. You won’t like the answer.”

  “Teraeth—”

  “I could wax poetic about reincarnation and destiny and how some souls are tied together through lifetimes. Alternately, I could remind you that you’ve been spending your nights in bed with my ex-girlfriend and you talk in your sleep.” Teraeth held out his hands. “Pick the answer that makes you more comfortable.”

  My gut twisted. “Kalindra told you.”

  “Kalindra told me,” he agreed. “I recognized the description. Look, I understand that we haven’t given you a great deal of reason to trust us…”

  “Yeah, that part where you told me only a fool would, didn’t help.”

  He smiled. “My mother—” Teraeth paused and looked down at his hands. “Khaemezra has never been very good about just explaining matters. You see her as a priestess, but in her heart, she’s a soldier, a general. Her instinct is to only give out information if it’s strictly necessary. I know how frustrating that can be. I used to rail against her reticence, demand answers. I was so eager to rebel against her that I—” Teraeth broke off and gave the far wall that same distant stare.

  “You what? Finish the sentence. I want to know what you did.”

  “I nearly doomed all of us,” Teraeth finally said, bringing himself back to the present. “Don’t be the idiot I was. We are here to help you. Please accept that help.”

  “Even if that help is from a bartender?”

  The thing about anger—especially the thing about righteous anger—is how addictive it is. I didn’t want to let go of it. I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted to be furious, and here Teraeth was being sympathetic and reasonable. He made me irrationally angrier.

  Teraeth shook his head. “Whoever he is, I’m quite sure that he is more than a bartender or he’d never have gotten away with speaking to Khaemezra like that.”

  I paused. “Or speaking to you like that. What’s the deal with your father?”

  “It’s none of your business.” The answer was habit, instinct, and as soon as he said it, Teraeth’s expression closed off, but he didn’t amend the statement or correct himself.

  I pressed my lips together into a tight line. If we hadn’t just gone through this, maybe he could have said that and I wouldn’t have cared. Was it any of my business? But I’d been kept too long in the dark about too much, been the last person to know. They knew everything about me, and I knew nothing about them. That had become intolerable.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of my business. But you’re going to tell me anyway. You’ll tell me because you want to be my friend and you want me to feel like I can turn to you for help. Don’t act like your mother.”

  We stared at each other.

  Teraeth threw up his arms and walked away, but only a few steps before he turned back. “Fine. You know how your family name is D’Mon because your father’s family name is D’Mon?”

  “Just answer the damn—”

  “I am. Let me finish.”

  I stopped myself. “Okay. Go on.”

  “Well…” Teraeth held up his hands. “We vané do the same thing. Only we choose a parent and that parent’s family name becomes the first syllable of our name. There aren’t that many vané, so for us lineage isn’t something separate that we skip in casual conversation. My name starts with ‘Ter’ just as my father’s name starts with ‘Ter’ and his grandmother’s name started with ‘Ter’ and … you get the idea. It’s nothing mysterious. When you hear a vané’s name, you have a pretty good idea who their family must be too.”

  “Wait. Wait. You’re telling me your name isn’t Teraeth at all? It’s … ‘Aeth’? ‘Raeth’? How does that even work?”

  “This is why I didn’t want to talk about it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “My name is Teraeth. Family name and personal name. They’re never separated. Before I knew who my father was, I took my mother’s signifier, Khae. After I found out who he was, I changed it. I took his name, not to honor him, but to remind myself of his sins.”

  Now that was interesting, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking intrigued. “Sins? Is that why Doc reacted like I’d just set fire to his tavern?”

  “Did he?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Who’s the most famous vané you’ve ever heard of whose name starts with ‘Ter’?”

  “I don’t know a lot of vané…”

  “I promise you’ve heard of this one.”

  It took me a minute. Then I remembered my stories, told on Surdyeh’s knee. “Wait … Prince Terindel? Terindel the Black? The guy who was demanding human sacrifices from the locals in Kirpis? There’s a song about him. Hell, I think there’s a play…”

  Teraeth laughed ruefully. “Terindel wasn’t demanding human sacrifices. That was just a story I—never mind. The Kirpis is home to the largest ariala and drussian deposits on the continent. The Kirpis vané owned them; Quur needed those mines to fuel their war against the god-kings. Atrin Kandor made up an excuse to justify taking the land. Easy as that. And now … now Terindel’s my father.”

  “And you took his family name over Khaemezra’s?”

  “Like I said, I wanted to remind myself.” He shook his head. “And people think Thaena doesn’t have a sense of humor.” He cleared his throat and walked over to the musical instruments. “What did you used to play?”

  “A harp,” I said, frowning at his heavy-handed change of subject, “which for some reason the slavers didn’t feel fit to let me keep.”

  Teraeth blocked my path again. “If you need a harp, we can always have one brought over from Zherias.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t really feel like waiting six months for another ship to return.”

  He smiled. “It wouldn’t be six months. Maybe an hour or two.”

  I stopped and narrowed my eyes. “What?”

  “Ynisthana is at the heart of an old magical gate system, not too dissimilar to the one that runs through Quur, although ours is a lot smaller. One of the routes goes from here to Zherias. It’s not something we advertise or use often for security reasons. For you though?” He shrugged. “I’m sure Khaemezra would make an exception.”

  I crossed my hands over my chest. “Are you seriously suggesting that Khaemezra’s had a way to get me off this island the whole time?”

  Teraeth tensed, likely because he sensed I was back on the cusp of losing my temper. “Yes, but at a high cost. It might take the Old Man a few days to realize you aren’t here, but when he finally does, he would probably bl
ow up in a literal way. If we were lucky, he’d just erupt the volcano at the center of the island, but he’d probably start attacking cities in Zherias and the nearby coast. Maybe even go as far south as Kishna-Farriga. Thousands would die. And then he’d start searching for you. He knows your aura, and he can fly.”

  My mouth dried. “Someone should do something about him.”

  “If you’d like to step up to the job, be my guest.”

  I ignored that, for obvious reasons. “So you can leave whenever you want. Anyone else can leave whenever they want. I’m the prisoner.”

  He cocked his head. “Hmm. Good point. I guess it is all about you.”

  I closed my eyes and breathed deep and tried my hardest not to punch him. He’d punch back and my face still hurt from the last time.

  I walked past Teraeth to the door opening.

  “What do you want with a harp anyway?” Teraeth asked.

  “It’s none of your business,” I snapped, and left in search of someone willing to fetch me one from Zherias.

  40: INTERLUDE IN AN ABATTOIR

  (Talon’s story)

  Alshena D’Mon descended the long flight of stairs from the Court of Princes down the hall to the east wing of the palace. She tapped her fan on the wall as she walked, tapped it against the tapestries and the carved wood paneling, tapped it with a fierce staccato beat of excitement.

  Servants and slaves scattered when they saw her coming.

  Alshena rushed down a different set of stairs: seldom visited, quiet, and dusty. At the end of the stairs she found a blank wall, unpainted, and pressed the mortar in a certain way. Pressing in the wrong way would have been fatal, but that didn’t concern the noblewoman. She knew the sequence so well she could repeat it in her sleep—if she ever slept.

  The red-haired matron of House D’Mon hummed a dirty sailor’s tune as she walked down the revealed dark passageway. It led down shadowy twisted stretches of tunnel that Therin D’Mon himself hadn’t used in well over a decade. Finally, the tunnel ended in a dim room.

  As Alshena entered the chamber, a man to her left screamed. His shackled body arched up from the low wooden table as he vomited black blood, splashing his body and the floor. A slow stain of sickly smelling bile spread in a pool as the man stopped twitching and lay in obscene rictus.

  Alshena lifted the edge of her agolé and stepped over the liquid.

  “Ducky, you used too much,” she said.

  At that statement, the shadow resting against the wall moved forward, and revealed himself to be Darzin D’Mon. He sighed. “I’m aware, love. I just can’t seem to balance this formula.” He looked disappointed, before his head snapped back up again and he scowled at Alshena. “Gods, do you have to look like her? You know I can’t stand the bitch.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t have married her then,” she replied. “Do you realize she looked like this just to annoy you? She’s really quite pretty.”

  “She’s really quite dead,” Darzin said.

  She bent over and touched the black fluid oozing from the dead man’s body. She sniffed it once, wrinkled her face in disgust, and wiped the liquid off on the dead man’s clothes. “Ugh. Must you poison them? It ruins the flavor.”

  Darzin sighed. “I didn’t kill him to satisfy your appetites, Talon. And the whole reason I ordered you to murder my wife was so I wouldn’t have to look at her anymore.” He waved his hand at her form in annoyance.

  “Oh, very well. I brought you a new flavor to sample, anyway.” At that sly pronouncement her figure wavered, then shifted and flowed. When she lowered her arms, Alshena D’Mon was gone. In her place was a stunning teenage girl, with dusky skin and waist-length hair fashioned into tiny braids. Both the girl’s hair and fingertips were henna dipped.

  Darzin smiled. “Very nice, sweet. A recent snack?” He ignored the dead man lying in the middle of the torture room. He crossed the floor and ran his fingers down the woman’s arms, around to the small of her back. He nuzzled his mouth against her neck with all the tenderness of an illicit lover.

  Talon nodded, looking up at him through thick eyelashes. “She was so sweet. I should give your new ‘son’ a thank-you gift for leading me to her.”

  Darzin looked her in the eyes and then laughed. “Well, yes, I suppose there must be some advantages to working in a brothel.” He continued chuckling as he removed his arms from around her. “He has good taste, at least.”

  Talon leaned over the table and rubbed her reddened fingers down Darzin’s arm. “I bet he’d taste good too. Oh, he’s so pretty. I just want to eat him up. Can I have him, dearest? Please?”

  Darzin shook his head and snickered. “Don’t be ridiculous, Talon. He’s my son.”

  The room grew quiet.

  Talon scraped a sharpened nail against the edge of the blood-soaked table, carving a deep channel in the wood. “If that boy is your son I am the Virgin Duchess of Eamithon,” she growled.

  Darzin threw up his arms. “Fine, love. You’re right. He’s not my son, but since his real father will never have the stones to admit the truth, claiming him lets me control the brat. So, no, you can’t kill him.” He paced the room several times.

  Talon sat down on the edge of the table and drew up her legs. “He is so sweet, Darzin. Fifteen years old and jaded as a ripe peach. His brain would taste just like ginger jelly.”*

  “You can’t have him.”

  Talon thought about it for a moment. “You know—”

  Darzin frowned at her, half-amused and half-worried by her overwhelming appetites. “This isn’t negotiable, my dear. You want a new slave? I’ll buy you anyone you want, but not him.”

  Talon snapped at him, “Don’t interrupt me. That’s not what I was going to say!”

  “My apologies, sweet,” he said with mock seriousness.

  Talon pretended to busy herself with counting her toes. She said, “This girl he liked so much. The one I ate, Morea. She has a sister. Dear Kihrin was looking for said sister. I think he wanted to play hero and rescue her from her bad, nasty slave master.”

  “How sweet,” Darzin said. “A real-life reenactment of the Maevanos.”

  “Shhhh … don’t interrupt while Nana is explaining the rules of the game,” Talon said. “With Morea dead, little Kihrin might still want to play hero. Since this sister is as beautiful as Morea was, why, she might even make the poor boy fall in love with her—especially if she was tragic, if she needed to be rescued. She’d be able to get the young boy to do almost anything for her…”

  Darzin smirked. “Yes, I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Why, he might even take off the Stone of Shackles for her.” The look of sweet delight she gave him, angelic under any other circumstance, could only be described as the purest evil.

  “The Stone—?” Darzin raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  Talon snarled, and her voice took on a demonic quality as she hissed, “Don’t play games, human. Despite how I appear, I am thousands of years older than you and it is just possible I am not an idiot.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  She traced a design with her littlest finger in the silk of Darzin’s shirt. “Haven’t I served you for all these years now? Done whatever you asked? Seduced whoever you wanted? Slept with whoever you wanted? Torn to little itty-bitty pieces whoever you wanted?”*

  “Always,” he agreed, eyeing her.

  Talon leaned forward until her face was right next to his. She whispered, “To my kind, that stone he wears around his neck is as obvious as a lightning strike on a clear night would be to you. It hums to my body of its power. It vibrates with magic. It sings.”†

  Darzin gazed at the shape-shifter in amazement. “I had no idea you had this ability.”

  Talon blushed and looked away, a perfect imitation of a cloistered virgin. When she looked back, her expression was more serious. “I take it this is why you took so long to find him? Because the stone shields him?”

  Darzin scoffed. “I
t was pure luck I stumbled upon him at all. I can only assume that when Lyrilyn ran with him, she gave the baby to that whorehouse bitch my father used to own.”

  “Poor Therin. He frees Ola and she repays him by stealing the son he won’t admit is his anyway.” She paused. “Are we sure Therin didn’t put her up to it? It would be a canny move for him, if Therin wanted to keep an eye on his son without admitting who daddy is.”

  He frowned and studied the far walls of the dungeon before shaking his head. “No. If he knew where Kihrin was the whole time, he’d have damn well shown up when the High General said he’d found one of our Ogenra in the Lower Circle. But you ate the brat’s keeper, that Reveler musician. Didn’t he know anything?”

  She feigned disappointment. “Ola was the mastermind behind this. There were rumors she was a Zheriaso witch—there might be truth to that.”*

  “This whole thing has been a disaster. Somehow, she paid for her bond price, and Therin let her buy back her freedom. Who does that? He should have taken the metal and whipped her until she learned her place. Instead she took the brat and raised him right under our noses, and none of us noticed. Downright embarrassing. We’ve had no luck finding her either, not with all our people out looking. Maybe, as you say, she is a witch. I’ll see if the Academy can send a witchhunter out to help.”

  “When you do, tell them to check all the bakeries and sweet shops.”

  Darzin smirked. “If I had my way, we’d just kill the brat and give him to you. However, from what little we’ve researched on the Stone of Shackles, the necklace lends its wearer a kind of immortality, so we don’t dare. And like most of those damned rocks, it can only be removed by the owner willingly.”†

  “Well, that shouldn’t be hard. Who do we have to torture?”

  Darzin scowled. “A dead musician or a whorehouse madam. Unfortunately, Thaena wouldn’t Return the musician, and I can’t find Ola anywhere.”

  She looked disappointed, giving no hint of her own culpability in Surdyeh’s death or Ola’s disappearance. “Someone could cast an enchantment on his mind, perhaps?”