Realm Breaker

by Aveyard, Victoria

  “Is this what you want, Erida of Galland?”

  Suddenly he stood over her, glaring down, a lock of dark red hair falling over his forehead. She reached up to remove his doublet, fingers grasping at his collar, but he seized her by both wrists. His skin seared against her own, though his grip was gentle as he pulled her hands away.

  “Get on with it,” she said again, a whisper this time. A plea as much as a command.

  He leaned forward, coming closer. Erida could smell the tang of smoke on his skin, the new embers of flame.

  Then he dropped her wrists. “Not like this.”

  She didn’t move when he reached behind her, swiping pillows and blankets to the floor. Silk and fine linens peeled away, spilling off the bed at haphazard angles. He even shifted the mattress for good measure, forcing her to jump to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Erida demanded, looking between him and the ruined bed.

  He didn’t answer and assessed the blankets. After a long moment, he nodded, satisfied. Then he rounded on the Queen, his focus unbroken, his eyes combing over her hair. His fingers soon followed, loosing her braids, mussing the ash-brown curls until they fell in errant waves, unkempt and out of place. Erida stared at him through it all, speechless, furious. She wanted to slap him away. She wanted to pull him closer, the heat of his fingers a threat and a promise. Taristan kept his lips pursed, his breathing even, his eyes far from her own as he worked. And, finally, he tugged at the shift, lowering one side of the collar, until a white shoulder peeked through, spotted with three small freckles few men had ever seen.

  Before she could even flinch, he drew a dagger and cut at his own palm, using the hand to smear a line of blood across the white sheets.

  Only when he stepped back, putting a full six feet between them, did he raise his eyes. His palm healed before her eyes, the flesh knitting back together as he wiped the blood away. He scrubbed his other hand through his hair, setting it at ends like her own. Erida glared at him with all the rage and indignation she could muster, her anger volcanic. A tinge of pink spotted high on his cheeks, the only change in his stoic face.

  “I’ll send word when Ronin gets his bearings,” Taristan said, bending into a short, stiff bow. It was the only awkward thing about him, like watching a lion try to joust.

  “That’s too much blood,” Erida said dryly, glaring at the mussed blankets, feeling hot all over. How dare you, she thought, running a hand through her ruined hair. She wanted to strangle him.

  “Enough to satisfy any stupid lords who dare to ask after our bedsheets.”

  “There will still be talk,” she said through clenched teeth. If you shrug again, I will kill you, and find someone less infuriating to marry.

  Taristan tossed his doublet away with a curling sneer, leaving only his undershirt tucked into his breeches. He seemed more himself without the trappings of royalty, and he rolled his shoulders, the white veins moving with his muscles.

  “Let them talk, Your Majesty,” he replied, turning on his heel. It was the closest thing to a farewell he gave, another Spindle already on his mind.

  In his wake, the Queen burned. Not like this, she thought, playing the words over and over in her mind. It was a puzzle she didn’t know how to solve.

  21

  EYES OPENED

  Sorasa

  Fleeing on horseback was not the means of escape Sorasa would have chosen. The farmlands of the Great Lion’s fertile valley rolled with gentle hills and patchwork fields, offering poor cover in daylight. Their mounts were little more than pack horses, even the strange gray mare the Jydi witch had somehow summoned. There would be no mad gallop for the border. Not on these stumbling nags, Sorasa thought, despairing of the stolen horse beneath her. It was no sand mare, a shadow of the horses of her homeland, who moved like wind made flesh.

  She led the way again, with Andry on her left. The squire was sharp-eyed, at least, always watching the horizon behind them. He named castles as they loomed, silhouetted on the hills, pointing out the feudal holdings of some lord or lady. Information of little use, mostly, but at least Corayne drank it in, asking questions as the hours passed.

  The Cor girl was like a rag in water, soaking up whatever she could of the lands around them. She wore a stolen shawl over her shoulders to hide the Spindleblade on her back. And she had a hat ready, should they pass an errant patrol. Not that Sorasa—or Dom, for that matter—would give a country patrol the opportunity to see Corayne’s face. The assassin would sooner kill ten watchmen than risk one breathing a hint of their whereabouts. Her focus strayed from the road to Corayne more often than not. Dom was the same, his eyes never leaving Corayne’s shoulders, as if his stare alone could shield her from the dangers of the world.

  Valtik didn’t seem to notice any of them at all. The witch let her horse meander, keeping pace but weaving away from their track to pick through broken hedges and saddle-high fields of wheat. She sang under her breath, in Jydi and in another language no one could place. Of course the words rhymed. Sorasa shut the song out.

  It’s difficult enough minding the squire, the Elder, and the apparent hope for the realm. I refuse to waste time or energy minding the witch too.

  The farm lanes branched, trailing between hills and streams. Peasant farmers paid them little notice. No one patrolled the lanes, but they were winding, doubling back on themselves. As the hours wore on, the farms grew more sparse, separated by brush and woodlands instead of hedges. The horses slowed, picking their way on tentative legs.

  “Our only advantage is speed,” Andry said, sitting up in the saddle as they broke through another stand of undergrowth. He urged his horse alongside Sorasa’s. “If we get on the Cor road west, we can give the horses rein and make better time.”

  Sorasa grimaced when Corayne mirrored Andry’s motions, maneuvering her horse to her other side. The assassin did not enjoy being hemmed in by anything, let alone teenagers.

  “I’ve always wanted to see a Cor road,” Corayne said. She even heaved a wistful sigh.

  “I met you on a Cor road, you scheming imp,” Sorasa bit back, and Corayne’s face fell. “If the Queen of Galland has any sense, she’s sent her fastest scouts along the roads in every direction, with orders to look out for a beanpole squire, an immortal troll, and a cloaked girl with a stolen sword and too many questions.” Sorasa twitched her heels and her horse jolted out ahead. “If you want to take the roads, fine, but we’ll be riding into an easy trap.”

  Dom’s voice was deep behind her. “Certainly you have a plan for whatever enemies we do run into, Sarn,” he said dryly.

  “Most of them involve throwing you at them,” Sorasa shot back. He grumbled in reply.

  “No roads, Corayne,” she added finally. The girl sank in the saddle, scowling. Sorasa could see a hundred replies fighting up her throat. “Farm lanes and deer paths won’t get us to Adira quickly, but they’ll get us to Adira alive.”

  “And once we’re there?” Andry reined alongside her again, undeterred. He looked older on horseback, at ease and in control. “You going to sell us to a northern slaver or bet our lives in a game of dice?”

  Sorasa wanted to ignore him. Silence was a stone wall few could climb. And the squire’s fear of Adira was inconsequential, if not idiotic. But she had a feeling he would pester her all the way to the city gates if need be. She offered a flash of teeth barely cousin to a smile.

  “I was sold into slavery before I could walk, Trelland. I don’t intend to put anyone else through that, even Lord Domacridhan,” she said, jerking her head back at the Elder. It was easy to pretend she didn’t see the sudden pull of pity on their faces. Even Dom softened a little, like granite worn by centuries of wind and rain. Sorasa had no use for any of it. “And I doubt any of you would be worth much in the gambling dens. The witch, maybe.”

  Corayne and Andry exchanged uncertain glances, falling quiet. But before Sorasa could enjoy it, Dom rumbled from the rear of their party.

  “You aim to recru
it more of your kind in that cesspool,” he growled.

  Sorasa sucked in a frustrated breath. How can a few rumors of thievery, murder, and citywide criminal enterprise have everyone in such a twist?

  “Assassins and mercenaries,” Dom pushed on. “Bound by coin, not honor or duty.”

  “Am I still being paid for my services, Elder?” Sorasa snapped, turning in the saddle to face him. Dom’s infernal gaze bored into her. “No, the Amhara are not my aim,” she said, collecting herself. “One of us is enough. But I do have two others in mind.”

  “Murderers and thieves, then,” she heard Dom mutter.

  “Better than a queen already allied against us. Or an Elder monarch too afraid to leave her palace,” Sorasa snapped. She listened for his telltale snarl or hiss of frustration. Somehow, he rewarded her with both.

  She guided her horse down a stream bank and crossed the rocky shallows. The air was cooler, the light soft. Though her homeland was dominated by the vast beauty of the Great Sands, it was also a country of water. Oasis pools, thousands of miles of bright coast, and the mighty Ziron thundering out of the mountains to dance northeast across the desert, giving life to Qaliram and Almasad before joining the Long Sea. She felt better with the water kissing her boots and the farms fading behind them.

  The others followed her into the stream, silent and storm-faced. Andry, afraid of the city ahead. Corayne, afraid of the sword on her back. Dom, afraid of nearly everything.

  And I am afraid too. It did no good to ignore fear or doubt.

  The borderlands between Galland and Larsia were no wilderness. An hour’s ride in any direction would bring them to a farm or castle or village. But for now they threaded a needle. It was right somehow, the path unseen but still felt.

  Though the horse beneath her was next to useless, Sorasa patted a hand down her neck.

  “Besides,” she said, “only one of them can be considered a murderer. Best not to bring it up.”

  “I can take first watch.”

  Andry stared down at her. He was both taller and wider than the Amhara assassin. His stance was broad, his brown hands on his hips, his dark eyes black in the dim light of evening. Even in his battered clothing, with no beard and light bruises on his face, he looked the picture of a knight.

  She heaved the saddlebags from her horse’s back, tucking them over her arms. “Noble of you, Squire,” she said, dropping them in a heap. The clearing was good ground to make camp, halfway up a rocky crag, their backs defended by sheer rock, their front obscured by trees. “But I think the Elder can manage.”

  Corayne stood at the edge of the campsite, looking down into the valley of the Green Lion. Under a black moon and clouded stars, there was only darkness. Her sword laid flat next to her. She rolled her shoulders, working away the ache of carrying it.

  “Dom should sleep,” Corayne said, glancing at the immortal. He tightened under her suggestion. “Heal up. It isn’t every day you lose half the blood in your body.”

  He scowled, working on a small fire. The kindling glowed. “I doubt it was half.”

  Sorasa and Corayne rolled their eyes at precisely the same time.

  “We’ll double,” the assassin said, patting the squire on the shoulder. He pursed his lips but didn’t argue. “I don’t intend to sleep through another corpse vision. Or worse.”

  The witch returned abruptly, her hair braided with ivy. She grinned toothily at them all as her mount nudged its way in among their tied horses.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about another sending,” Valtik said airily, sitting down in the dirt. Her bare feet splayed out before her, soles black as the sky. “The threads have drawn together, all that is ending.”

  Dom stood and frowned at her. “A sending?” he breathed, incredulous.

  “Care to explain?” Corayne said, looking between them.

  “It’s Vederan magic, rare even among my kind.” Dom paced around the witch so he could face her. She didn’t look up from her hands, busy weaving something Sorasa couldn’t see. “Vedera of great power can send images, visions, figures. To carry messages, mostly.”

  Valtik tutted low in her throat and stuffed her weaving up her sleeve. She kept her back to the growing flames. “It isn’t just your magic.” Then she checked the pouch at her waist, rattling the bones inside. “Keep an eye out for rabbits, boy. I’m low on knuckle­bones. Tragic.”

  Sorasa wanted to point out the absurdity of calling a five- hundred-year-old immortal being such a thing. Unless it isn’t. Unless he is a boy, to someone like her. A Spindlerotten witch. She eyed Valtik again, glaring through the shadows. The old woman was as gnarled like a tree root, her eyes unnatural, blue as the heart of a lightning bolt.

  “You sent them.” Corayne’s voice was flat and hard, steely as her face. Her grip on the sword tightened, fingers locking over the leather of the sheath. “The corpses, the ghosts.”

  I could smell them: they were burned and broken. I could hear the air gasping in their ruined chests. I could feel them, the heat of unending flame. They were as smoke, real and unreal, before my very eyes. Sorasa clenched her jaw, searching Valtik’s face for some answer. The old woman did not move.

  “You sent them,” Corayne said again, her teeth gritted. Cold air rippled over them, a brush of winter. “Did you send my dreams too? The nightmares I’ve had all summer long?”

  “Was not I who touched your sleep,” the Jydi crowed. “But something red and dark and buried deep.”

  Corayne felt it now, clawing at her throat. The memory of her nightmares nearly turned sunlight to shadow. She swallowed hard but saw no lie in the old woman.

  Then the squire jolted like a startled horse, some realization breaking over him. He circled the witch, incredulous. “I have not heard the whispers since I found you.”

  “The whispers—what whispers?” Dom’s voice stumbled.

  Trelland ignored him. “So many voices, and one like winter. One like yours.” His breath caught. “You’ve been speaking to me for weeks, telling me what to do. Keep the sword hidden, abandon my mother—”

  “How?” Dom sputtered. “Whispers? A sending? They were Taristan’s army, the Ashlanders exactly—”

  Valtik said nothing, content to watch them flounder. And Sorasa watched her. She crossed her arms, keeping her distance from the Jydi witch, far from the circle of the weak fire.

  “I think instead of how, we should be asking why,” Sorasa murmured. “Why whisper to Andry Trelland? Why send corpse shadows after us in the night?”

  To her surprise, Valtik’s head snapped up and her grin was manic, unhinged for a shivering second. The kindling crackled at her back, outlining her hunched figure, leaving her face in shadow, half formed. The light played tricks. Her teeth were too long; she went cat-eyed, pupils like slits in the strange blue. The ivy braids gleamed metallic, slick. Sorasa clenched her jaw, willing herself to see what existed and not what the witch wanted her to see.

  “You know why, Forsaken,” Valtik said, blinking. She shifted, and the shadows pulled back to show an old woman again. “Something to guide you. Something to guide them. To open your eyes, after where you’ve been.”

  Her muscles tightened, taut as coiled rope. “Stop calling me that, Witch.”

  “I only call people what they are,” Valtik replied with a half-moon smile. She waggled her feet like a child playing before the hearth.

  “And what would you call yourself, Gaeda?” Corayne said, easing herself to her knees next to the witch. Andry tensed, as if he wanted to pull her back from the old woman. But Corayne was unafraid, looking intently into her eyes.

  Valtik put a wrinkled hand to Corayne’s cheek.

  Corayne didn’t flinch, letting the witch stare into her.

  “The North Star,” the old woman finally said, tweaking her on the nose. Then her hand darted into her long cloak, pulling out the twig-and-bone charm still crusted with dried blood. She pressed it into Corayne’s fingers, closing each one over it. “Or bizarre,” sh
e added, chuckling.

  “I agree with the latter,” Dom said.

  Corayne leaned back on her heels, whirling to him. “You go to sleep,” she said, full of force. He blanched, flushing red over his cheeks and neck. The Elder had probably not been ordered to bed for centuries, if it had even happened at all.

  He sputtered, “I am not a mortal infant.”

  Corayne stood and shrugged, undeterred by his towering height. “We need you healthy, Dom.”

  “I—oh, very well,” he blustered, storming away from the campfire.

  Sorasa nearly howled when he lay down in the dirt like a dog, with no cloak, no blanket, no bed of any kind. He simply folded his arms, face to the sky, his eyes dropping shut in an instant. The snore that followed was instantaneous and unbearable.

  “Would anyone stop me if I smothered him?” she muttered, scuffing her boot in Dom’s direction. “Joking,” she snapped, catching sight of Andry and Corayne’s disapproval. “Andry, I’ll wake you when it’s your turn at the watch.”

  The squire ducked his chin. “All right.”

  “And you, no sendings, no whispers—” Sorasa added, turning back to the witch. But Valtik was gone, leaving no trace, not even the odd earthen scent that followed her everywhere.

  “Oh she’s gone again,” the assassin sneered, eyeing the darkness. She felt oddly like the darkness was staring back. “Magnificent.”

  With every passing day, Sorasa bet with herself. Who would break first and succumb to their curiosity? The next afternoon, she thought it would be Dom, when his eyes narrowed on her with his usual furor. But he never spoke. Corayne was an easy guess. The girl had thoughts about everything, from the strength of the wind off Mirror Bay to the growing season in the lowlands. Certainly she would find the spine to question Sorasa Sarn, the Fallen, the Forsaken. And there was Trelland too, not as blatant as the others. But he stole glances all day long, his interest obvious even to the horses. Valtik already knew and wouldn’t bother. She probably spends all day thinking up rhymes, Sorasa thought, grinding her teeth.