Realm Breaker

by Aveyard, Victoria

  The court rose to applaud their queen’s chosen, the high table already standing and calling their praises. The roar crashed like a wave, beating Corayne down and down and down, drowning her, pinning her, dragging her away from all hope of rescue.

  There he is.

  Her flesh and blood. Her father’s twin. Her monster.

  Hair like dark copper, the shadow of a beard, a thin mouth unsuited to smiles. Long nose, a brow like a rod of iron. A handsome face, all things considered: a fine doll for evil strings. Taristan of Old Cor, a Spindleblood prince, a traitor to the realm entire.

  He barely acknowledged the court, offering only a single, sharp glance before he looked at the Elder kneeling, the squire, and Corayne.

  The yards between them disappeared. His eyes were her own, black and endless, a sky without stars, the deepest part of the ocean. They were not empty: there was something in them, a presence Corayne could barely sense. But she knew it too. She saw it in her dreams. Red and hungry, without form, without mercy.

  What Waits.

  He stared out from her uncle’s eyes, waiting to strike.

  The man who followed Taristan could only be the Red. The wizard looked skeletal, white-skinned and blond-haired, with pale red eyes ringed with pink flesh. His mouth opened a little and he inhaled, tasting the air. She felt a clawing heat pull over her, prodding at her exposed skin.

  Toasts were called out, goblets raised again, but Corayne heard none of it. She was frozen, caught between the knight’s dagger and her uncle’s starving glare. He looked ready to eat her whole.

  He very well might.

  His steps were deliberate and smooth, taking him down the table, one hand extended to his queen’s advisors. They touched his rough fingers or kissed his knuckles, pledging allegiance, paying fealty, congratulating him on the good match. Only the Queen’s cousin hesitated, waiting a long moment before taking Taristan’s hand.

  Taristan’s eyes never left Corayne’s face. A thread ran between them, a rope from his hands to her neck. He pulled himself along it, closer and closer, until Corayne could hardly breathe.

  She trembled when he stopped before her, glaring down with menace. Over his shoulder, Erida watched, her head held high. There was no fear in her, no shock. No regret.

  Taristan raised his fist and Corayne braced herself for a strike, curling inward.

  Instead he gripped her cloak, tearing it away with the easy rip of blue cloth.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Corayne saw the sword hilt flash in the light, its jewels aflame. She tried to back away, only to feel the knight’s dagger pierce her clothing, nearly breaking the skin. There was nowhere to hide.

  “Get away from me,” she managed to bite out.

  On the floor, still bleeding, Dom seethed. “I’ll kill you,” he growled at Taristan, one hand pressed to his side. Even though three knights stood above him, hands on their swords, armored to the teeth, Corayne believed he would try.

  “So eager to repeat your mistakes, Domacridhan,” Taristan said wearily. Then he seized Corayne by the neck, his back obscuring her from the rest of the court. To anyone watching, it would seem he was merely speaking to a few guests, one of them kneeling in reverence. They were too busy in their revels to notice anything amiss. “Shall I kill her in front of you too?”

  He smiled into her face. Corayne wanted to spit, to struggle, but found her mouth dry and her mind blank of any options. This was not in her charts or lists. There was no preparing for this moment. They’d thought the Queen might not believe them, but to choose the other side? To choose him?

  I have no plan for the path in front of me.

  “Get away,” she said again, her hands balling into fists. While the heat of the Red’s power washed over her, her hands and feet remained cold, nearly frozen, the sensation creeping over her wrists and ankles.

  Taristan only shook his head, reaching for the sword. His grip tightened on her throat, while his other hand closed around the hilt of the Spindleblade. He grinned when he touched it.

  “That doesn’t belong to you,” he murmured, his breath oddly sweet in her face.

  Something broke inside her, snapping clean. A rush of cold pushed away the heat, and with it, Corayne slipped her hand in her pocket. Something tugged her fingers along, guiding them to the Jydi charm, the useless trinket. It felt frozen, hard as ice, the twigs honed to keen points.

  She had never been so afraid.

  With a will, she looked into Taristan’s eyes. She saw flecks of crimson in them, scattered like blood around the iris. They seemed to dance as he gripped the sword, pulling the first inches from the sheath. He was not watching her, but the steel, his lips moving without sound as he read the unfathomable runes on the blade.

  The Jydi twigs dragged along his face like a clutch of needles, their bite blue and ferocious, clawing ragged lines down his cheek. He howled, leaping back, and the sword slid back into place. Corayne expected to feel the dagger between her ribs, sliding clean through her organs, but it never came.

  Instead the knight behind her let loose a strangled yelp, blood spurting from beneath the golden gorget covering his throat. Dom launched to his feet, striking between the other knights. Andry twisted, managing to break the grip of his captor with a few fluid motions born of both surprise and skill. Together they cut a hole in the Queen’s guard, even while the hall exploded in confusion and chaos.

  The Queen shouted something; Taristan fought to his feet; the Red swept across the dais like a scarlet cloud of thunder, his hands raised and mouth forming a spell. Corayne nearly fainted in shock, her knees threatening to give out, as someone grabbed her around the middle, dragging her backward.

  “Run, gods damn you, run!” a woman’s voice said, hissing and familiar.

  Corayne could barely breathe, but she found the will to move, lunging over the flagstones. The charm was still in her hand, the twigs no longer cold, their broken ends dripping with blood too dark for mortal veins.

  Someone shoved her through the door at the side of the dais, urging her onward.

  She looked back to see a flood of guards, their swords drawn, cloaks cast aside. No use running, Corayne thought dimly. I might as well just sit down and wait.

  Then there was a noise like a thunderclap, followed by the shrieking scream of flowing chain, iron links sliding through their rings at breakneck speed. One of the many chandeliers of the great hall crashed down, the circle of it crushing a few men in their armor. It was not the last to fall. The chains loosed in succession, like a ripple on a pond, each hoop of iron and flame landing in a cloud of dust, breaking tables and limbs in equal measure. Boom, boom, boom—another beat of the war drum. One fell onto the dais, slamming down through the high table, cracking it in two. Corayne looked for a crimson dress, a jeweled crown, a wolf disguised as a queen, but Andry pulled her further into the passage, obstructing her view.

  Sorasa Sarn was the last through the door, barring it behind her, shutting out the great hall. Her eyes were wide, manic, as she took them in, looking from Dom’s wound to Corayne to Andry’s flushed and panting face. The dagger in her hand dripped scarlet.

  “Do I have to do everything around here?” she snarled.

  16

  GOOD BUSINESS

  Sorasa

  The gold was heavy in its pouch, lashed to her thigh beneath her leggings. The coins lay flat against each other, silent despite their number. Any assassin who could be betrayed by the clink of coin wasn’t worth it in the first place, and Sorasa Sarn was worth every piece. The Elder gold would go far indeed, funding travel to any corner of the Ward. If Galland is going to war with hell, I want to be far away.

  She gritted her teeth, trying to forget the acrid smell of burned flesh and rot and broken realms. Saving the world is not the work of assassins, she told herself. Just move on, Sarn.

  It took no time to pick a lock and find new clothing in an empty apartment. She discarded her cloak and tunic in exchange for a berry-red gown edged
in gold and silver thread. It was too loose, but well suited for hiding her sword, daggers, and coiled whip. She kept her leather leggings and boots too, concealed beneath the flowing skirts. With her hair unbound, she could still pass as a ladies’ maid, if not a foreign noblewoman visiting from the south. They were easy masks to slip behind, and she wore them well.

  She passed the maids with their baskets of roses, crimson in the torchlight. They scuttled by, complaining of thorns and the Queen’s wedding.

  Tonight, it was not opportunity that called Sorasa Sarn, but grim curiosity.

  Even at the citadel, protected by sea cliffs and desert, the Amhara were well informed on the doings of the world. Queen Erida was well known, as were her many rejected suitors. Princes, warlords, rich land barons, and poor heirs. None were worthy of the Gallish queen.

  But someone is today.

  Sorasa’s footsteps slowed, hesitating at a crossing of passages. The great hall was ahead, but the servants’ wing was to the left, its hallways narrow and winding, a warren of storerooms, sleeping quarters, kitchens, cellars, a brewery, a buttery, a laundry, and a bakehouse. Not to mention its own gate, dock, and bridge to the rest of the city.

  The decision took only a moment.

  The residence, great hall, and east wing were newborn, a riot of vaulted archways, soaring stonework, and stained glass completed only in the last decade. They were magnificent, beautiful, and woefully vulnerable, built for style rather than safety. A dozen alcoves and balconies made Sorasa’s path even easier. She moved on, chin high before servants and eyes low before guards, her manner shifting from lady to maid and back again in fluid rhythm. As always, she was surprised by how easy it was to pass through a palace unaccosted, without question or even a curious glance.

  No wonder so many women served the Guild. The Amhara has great need for those who can pass unseen, and who is more unseen to men than a woman?

  A long passage ran the southern length of the great hall, connecting the east wing to the keep with a row of lion-faced columns, some stoic, some snarling, each regal as a king. The doorways between the columns to her right were open, flung wide to show the great hall in all its splendor. A knight stood in each, facing outward, eyes dull as Sorasa walked past. Queen Erida’s late father had spared no expense in his palace, crowning his high table with a curved wall of windows brilliant as jewels. Green silk and velvet dominated the crowd of courtiers, each in competition to be more verdant than the last. One idiot appeared to be wearing a lion’s mane as a collar. By Sorasa’s glancing count, more than two hundred nobleborn men and women feasted, shouting toasts to the Queen and her betrothed. He was not on the raised dais yet, if the empty chair by the Queen was any indication. Erida was impossible to ignore at the center of her high table, her gown red as a polished ruby, her face moon white. A marvelously simple target for any inclined to send Galland into a succession crisis.

  Not my job, not my problem, Sorasa thought, eyeing the knights again.

  She turned a corner, edging along the banquet, half listening to chattering voices. She set to climbing, ascending steps to a gallery above.

  It ringed the great hall in a wide balcony, open to below, and was blissfully empty of roving courtiers. The chandeliers, great hoops of iron, hung level with the gallery, on heavy chains strung along the double-vaulted ceiling, the links bolted at each end of the hall.

  The feast unfurled below her in all its glory. Pale faces passed from table to table, bending together to whisper or shout, some dancing, some eating, all drinking their fill. Sorasa had seen many royal courts in her years, from Rhashir to Calidon, and though the languages and customs varied, the people were the same, easy to predict. Most would be wondering about the Queen’s betrothed too.

  Does Mercury know? Sorasa thought, settling into the shadows of the gallery.

  He would be back at the citadel, gray hair falling around him, sitting in his old chair, at the center of a thousand threads pulled from every corner of the Ward. Letters and birds and spies, whispers and codes.

  The master of the Amhara sees every piece of the great puzzle, while the rest of us blindly feel for edges.

  Her lip curled with distaste. Mercury’s leash always chafed, even when she enjoyed his favor, hating and loving his attention at the same time.

  The minutes flowed like water. She had learned patience in the cells of the citadel, as a child all but vibrating out of her skin with nervous energy. That energy was trained from her quickly, after a night in darkness with nothing but a Rhashiran armory lizard for company. More than ten feet long, with jaws to rival a wolf, the armory was deadly but near blind. Standing still was a child’s only defense against being eaten alive. It was nothing to stand still now, with only knights and drunken courtiers to mind.

  Indeed, she counted no less than six spilled goblets of wine, three platters smashed, and one old man snoring into his plate of summer greens. The rest chattered and drank, even at the high table. Sorasa recognized the man at the Queen’s side as her elder cousin Lord Konegin. How much would the Queen pay to know that he offered the Amhara a king’s ransom to kill her? she wondered, smirking. Or that the old woman on her council bought off the contract with enough gold to sink a war galley?

  The hall grew more raucous with every passing course and passed flagon of wine. Soon her court will be too drunk to remember who she picked.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye, not below, but across, on the other side of the gallery, on the balcony opposite her own. It was shadowed as well, seemingly empty but for two faces at the edge of the light. She squinted and raised a hand, covering the chandeliers, allowing her eyes to adjust for the darkness the figures stood in.

  One had the bearing of a soldier, straight-backed and trim, a hand resting on his hip where Sorasa could just see the hilt of a fine sword. His cloak was black, left open to show a doublet of purple velvet patterned like scales. His face was bowed, his focus on the high table, showing only the glint of dark red hair. The other was a priest, hooded in crimson. Judging by his colors, he was a dedicant of Syrek. The god of destruction and creation, conquest and peace. A patron of the kingdom of Galland, whose rulers supposed themselves conquerors and creators.

  Neither man took any notice of her, distracted as the rest of the palace by the mystery about to unfold. They filled her with an icy touch of dread and gut instinct. They didn’t speak, though the soldier shifted, and his fingers clenched and unclenched on his sword hilt. Impatient. Not like the priest, who was a statue in scarlet, his face bone-white beneath his hood.

  The dedicant orders serve their gods and their high priests, not kings or queens. He listens for another, gathering word to be passed on, Sorasa surmised, looking over the priest again. But the soldier? Who does he serve?

  He did not have the bearing of a noble. He was not a knight or a great lord, and no diplomat would spend a feast hidden away. But he wasn’t a palace guard either, not in those clothes, without armor or the lion emblazoned on his chest.

  She kept her eyes on him as she moved, careful in the shadows, her steps muffled by the rich carpet along the gallery floor. Perhaps he is a spy, she thought. An assassin from the Amhara, or from another guild. Her eyes dragged over him again. He was tall and lean, with wiry muscles standing out at his neck, the kind earned hard, through necessity. He could be a simple cutthroat, hired in some gutter. A mad dog set loose.

  Her concentration snapped away at a commotion below, three figures striding between the long banquet tables, set shoulder to shoulder. Two she recognized.

  So they found their squire.

  The Queen waved her knights off, allowing the three to approach her table. Sorasa wished she could hear their plea, absurd as it would be. Dom the walking storm cloud, Corayne and her flickering courage. “Your Majesty, we need your help to defeat an army of demons led by my mad uncle. Yes, I’m the only one who can stop him. Yes, I’m a seventeen-year-old girl. Yes, I’m perfectly serious.”

  But Erida did
not turn them away. Instead the Queen beckoned, her face gentle and open, so they could speak privately of the Ward’s fate. Tell her of the corpses on the hill, Sorasa thought, remembering her blade as it passed through them. Tell her of the slaughter. Tell her of your scars, Domacridhan.

  “Domacridhan.”

  The soldier hissed, the sound carrying down the gallery. His voice was venom.

  Sorasa pressed back against a column, folding herself into the shadows.

  The soldier was glaring down at the Elder, and then at Corayne, before raising his face to the light. His eyes, black and familiar, seemed to glint red, a trick of the chandeliers.

  Bits of thread joined in her mind, weaving a picture and a realization. Reality slotted together like plates in a good suit of armor.

  Every instinct Sorasa Sarn had ever earned lit on fire, scorching her with warning.

  The first, the strongest, screamed.

  RUN.

  “Look at his face, Ronin,” the soldier murmured to the priest, who did not move. He is no priest, at least not to any god of the Ward. “I thought Elders were supposed to heal.”

  “They do. When cut by weapons of the Ward,” Red Ronin replied. The wizard folded his hands into his robes. “But a Spindleblade? The weapons of the Ashlands, of Asunder, blessed by What Waits? Those wounds are not so easily closed. It’s why the Elders remain in their enclaves, cowering, even when the prince survived to tell the tale of us. They see what we can do. They fear us more than any mortal army upon the Ward.”

  Sorasa did not dare another step closer. Her hands worked beneath her skirt, pulling out a small dagger. She cut quietly along the sides of her gown, giving herself more room to move.

  Run her instincts howled again. She could already feel the palace closing in, stone and glass, silk and wine. Fuck the Elder and the girl and the squire. Fuck the Ward.

  “She looks like me,” Taristan said sharply. He watched as Corayne disappeared from the hall, following the Queen and her knights through a side door. “Like my brother.”