Realm Breaker

by Aveyard, Victoria

  In the end, it was Corayne who summoned the courage. She had the tact to ask a few days later, in the evening, apart from the others, who were busy preparing another meager camp. Andry was off using his foolish kettle, brewing up some tea.

  “Osara,” Corayne said, letting the word hang in the air.

  The sky was clear, and Sorasa lifted her face to the stars. She stared at them instead of Corayne. They had known each other only a few weeks, and sometimes it was easy to forget that the girl had Corblood in her veins, and a pirate for a mother. Not tonight, Sorasa thought.

  “It’s a title given to blooded Amhara exiled from the Guild,” she said plainly.

  Fallen, Forsaken, Broken. All meant the same, all were uttered with the deepest and most vicious disgust. Osara, in her language, which stung worst of all. Lord Mercury had declared it in front of all the Guild, with every eye upon the fresh mark still bleeding on her ribs. Cruder than the rest, only a few lines of stick and poke, given without thought to her pain. She never made a sound while they did it, branding her forever, casting her from the ranks of the Amhara. Even Sorasa admitted the punishment fit the crime.

  “I suspected as much,” Corayne murmured, dropping her voice. It would not stop the immortal from hearing their conversation. Sorasa only wished he could hear all the times she cursed him in her head. “Dom didn’t know, when he found you in Byllskos. When he contracted you to find me.”

  “I was simply the first Amhara to cross his path, the easiest to find, the only one no longer shielded by the strength of the Guild.” She glanced across the clearing, a flat surrounded by thick forest. The border was close, the trees pressing in as they could not in the valley. Sorasa moved into the eaves of the wood and Corayne followed without question. “He doesn’t know how money works, or much of the world, for that matter. Of course I took the contract, even if the Guild no longer allows me to.”

  Corayne narrowed her eyes, and Sorasa braced herself for the inevitable question. The why. The reason for the words cut and inked into her flesh.

  But it did not come.

  “What are you going to do with the money?”

  “What does anyone do with money?”

  “Most get old and fat in comfort.” Her gaze lingered on the assassin’s tattooed fingers. They were crooked, scarred beneath the ink, callused by bow and blade. “I don’t think that’s what you want.”

  Her scrutiny rankled. Sorasa gave her a sneer sharp enough to cut flesh. “You think smuggling steel and charting trade routes for a ship you’ve never sailed on gives you the faintest idea what I want?”

  “I think growing up with a pirate for a mother, a woman with all the money she could ever want, a daughter she claims to love, who will never turn from the risk and reward of the sea, gives me some idea,” she said coolly, folding her arms. “I know he offered you something more than money. Something more valuable than all the gold in the vaults of Iona. I just couldn’t figure out what.”

  Until now.

  “Well, Corayne an-Amarat. Impress me with what you think you know,” Sorasa hissed. She felt like a lonely traveler facing a mountain lion, spreading her arms wide in an attempt to scare it off. An odd thing for an assassin to feel against a young girl, even one as keen and clear-eyed as Corayne.

  “You need a way back in, and you can’t buy it, or you would have already.”

  Sorasa had never met Meliz an-Amarat, Hell Mel, captain of the Tempestborn, the furious and fierce mistress of the Long Sea. And if Taristan’s face was any indication, her daughter did not take after her mother’s line. But her mother was in her all the same, in the set of her voice, the steel resolve, the dogged and unyielding pursuit. For Meliz, that meant treasure, bounty, a profit. For Corayne, it was truth. She hunted it like a hound.

  “Assassins love gold,” she pressed on. Her eyes took on a distant look as she spoke, sifting through her own thoughts. “But they love blood more. The Amhara Guild is famed for their skill. And what could be more skillful than killing an Elder?”

  I asked for gold and he paid it. I set a higher price than any before. All the wealth of Iona, an immortal queen’s treasure laid at my feet. He promised it without thought.

  And when I asked for his life, for his throat cut by my own hand, in a place of my choosing, before the eyes I wanted . . . he didn’t hesitate to promise me that too.

  There was no use in denial. Corayne would see through it. She wouldn’t push, but she would know. And what do I care? I’ve done worse to better, and for less in return.

  One insufferable immortal life is worth the Guild. It is a cost I am happy to pay.

  “If you’re worrying about Domacridhan’s gigantic head, don’t bother,” Sorasa answered. They were closer to the water now, Mirror Bay only a few miles south. A breeze blew cool through the trees, smelling of rain somewhere far off. She inhaled greedily. Still, the scent of rain was a novelty to her. “The road is long before us.”

  Corayne’s throat bobbed. The stars were in her eyes. “And at the end?”

  “If we survive, you mean?” A rather large if. “Let’s think about that bridge when we cross it.”

  “I’d like to know that bridge isn’t going to be cut in half.”

  The constellation of the Unicorn shone brightly overhead, said to be a good omen. A sign of luck. Sorasa believed in neither, but it was still a comfort. There were unicorns in her homelands, among the famed Shiran herds of the sand dunes. Black with onyx horns, white with pearl, brown with bronze. She had seen them with her own eyes, more than once. They were gone in most of the north, fading with the years, but the south knew how to protect its wonders. Sorasa longed to see one again, a wonder made of flesh instead of starlight.

  She took a step away from Corayne, drawing her stolen coat closer. Summer still ruled, but Sorasa felt a chill sink into her desert blood.

  “Ask the witch, if you want the future. ‘So the bone tells,’” she chuckled, rolling her eyes.

  Corayne’s expression soured. “I don’t think it works like that.”

  “If it works at all,” Sorasa replied. “She might be Spindlerotten, but she’s not exactly helping us along, is she? Or, at least, she only helps when she feels like it.”

  “I think they prefer the term Spindletouched. And she is helping.”

  “Calling us names and speaking in riddles isn’t the kind of help we need.” Once again, the witch was nowhere in sight. She could be hiding three steps away or three miles, for all Sorasa knew. It was frustrating; it was unnerving. There was no urgency to the old woman, even with all her warnings about the realm and its doom. “She says there’s another Spindle torn, fine. Where is it? What is it doing? What are we supposed to face, and how? Does she expect us to ride into hell and fight What Waits ourselves?”

  Sorasa jumped when Valtik seemed to melt out of the tree line, a pair of dead rabbits dangling from her belt. “Where’s the fun in telling you everything?” she said, not breaking pace. “That’s a boring song to sing.”

  “There are too many curse words, in too many languages, for me to choose only one,” Sorasa growled at the witch’s silhouette. Why am I doing this? She asked herself for the hundredth time.

  The corpses loomed in answer, just as terrible. Even though she now knew their origin. That was somehow worse, to think they’d only been sendings, shadows of what the realm truly faced. The many hands of Taristan of Old Cor, who was the hand of What Waits.

  After a moment, she realized Corayne was still with her, letting the shadows creep around them. She watched Sorasa as she would the sea, reading a tide. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

  “You didn’t ask why I was exiled.”

  Corayne shifted, as if coming unstuck. “I figure that’s your business,” she muttered, nearly inaudible as she walked away. It was her turn for first watch.

  Sorasa tried to remember the last time she’d said thank you to a living person and meant it. Years, if not decades, she realized, racking her brain.
r />   Well, no use in breaking the streak now.

  22

  WORTH THE PAIN

  Andry

  They crossed the Orsal under the cover of darkness, the gentle river sloshing up to their knees as they rode single file beneath the keen light of a sliver moon. We are in Larsia now, Andry knew, feeling the invisible divide pass over them. He expected relief, but it never came. The Queen of Galland will hunt us no matter where we go, so long as we hold a Spindleblade. So long as Corayne lives. Andry shivered, but not from the water soaking through his breeches.

  She rode next to him, bowing under the weight of the sword. As soon as they were out of the river, she dozed, her head lolling forward on her chest. Andry smiled to himself and marveled at her ability to sleep in the saddle, or on any ground they made camp on. Even with the weight of the realm on her shoulders, Corayne an-Amarat had a talent for sleeping.

  But she does not sleep deeply, he thought. Despite the weak light, the shadows beneath her eyes stood out starkly. Her eyes fluttered behind her lids, swept away in some dream.

  When they finally made camp by a copse of willow trees, he was glad to take the first watch. Sorasa claimed one tree like a tent, disappearing behind a curtain of leaves, while Dom took another, gesturing for Corayne to follow. Even when she was sleeping, he was never far from Corayne. She yawned, half awake, trudging into the roots.

  Any good squire knew how to clean and dry traveling clothes, and Andry Trelland was a very good squire. He spent his watch tending their gear, scrubbing mud from leather, oiling steel, and checking over the horses. He lost himself in chores he used to chafe under, giving his mind something to focus on that wasn’t the ending of the realm. When it was time to wake Dom for his turn, the camp was spotless, their saddlebags organized, the horses sleeping soundly with cleaned shoes and gleaming coats.

  The willow branches parted, showing two lumps asleep among the roots, tucked into their cloaks. For once, Corayne was still, her face smooth, her mouth slightly parted. Her black hair fanned out around her like a dark halo.

  Andry’s cheeks warmed against the cool night and he glanced away, turning to the great hulk that was an Elder. To his surprise, Dom was still sleeping. His brow furrowed, his eyelids squeezed shut, and his lips moved without sound, his face pulled in what looked like pain.

  “My lord?” Andry whispered, dropping his voice so he could barely hear himself.

  The Elder’s eyes snapped open, wavering as he took in his bearings, pulling himself from sleep as one might pull themselves from the sea.

  The squire waited, biting his lip with worry. This is not like him, he thought, but before he could offer to take a double watch, Dom rose to his feet in silence, throwing the cloak of Iona around his shoulders again. He went without a word, slipping back through the willow branches.

  Andry followed. Well, at least I can sleep now, he thought, but Dom’s behavior gave him pause. Instead of roving the camp, taking the perimeter as he usually did, the leviathan Elder settled onto a rock and stared at his boots. His jaw worked, his gaze far away, his mind clearly somewhere else.

  “Was it a bad dream?” the squire heard himself ask. Though exhaustion mounted, pulling at his edges, Andry claimed the boulder next to Dom.

  “The Vedera do not dream,” he answered with a prim sniff. Andry only stared, an eyebrow raised. “Often.”

  The squire shrugged. “If you want to talk, if you need someone to speak to—”

  “The only thing I need is Taristan’s head on a spike,” Dom snarled to the stars.

  His rage was obvious, but beneath it—pain. Andry felt it in himself, the anger and sorrow melding into one, until it held him together as much as it pulled him apart.

  “I dream of it too, that day at the temple,” he murmured. “I see them die every time I close my eyes.”

  The Elder said nothing, silent as the stone he sat on. His face went blank, his eyes like shuttered windows. Whatever Dom felt, he wrestled it away where no one else could see. But Andry perceived.

  He inched closer.

  “Had you ever lost someone, before all this?”

  Certainly an immortal has seen things die before, but not so close. Maybe he doesn’t know how to grieve, or understand death at all. Perhaps he’s never had to.

  The silence stretched like a blanket, Dom’s face still empty. Andry waited. He had learned patience as a page boy, an easy lesson in the halls of the New Palace. It was nothing to call on it now, when his friend needed it.

  Finally the Elder roused, his eyes gleamed, oddly wet.

  “I was a child when my parents were taken from me, called home to Glorian by the Elder gods,” he said slowly, each word a battle. “Some three hundred years ago. The last dragon upon the Ward was terrorizing the Calidonian coast. They rode from Iona, seeking glory.” His voice broke, his massive hands knitted together. “They never found it.”

  Andry swallowed hard.

  “My father died when I was a boy too,” he forced out. The pain had been dulled by the years, its edge long lost. But still his father’s absence was an ache, a hole he would never fill. “It was nothing as exciting as a dragon. Just a petty border skirmish. Men dead on both sides, for no real reason.”

  The squire looked up to find the Elder staring, studying him as he would an opponent.

  “Cortael’s death feels . . . different,” Dom said, searching for the right words. “Worse.”

  Andry dropped his head again, nodding furiously. “Because we were there. Because we lived while the rest didn’t.”

  Sir Grandel and the Norths rose up before him, their faces white in death, their armor rusted, their bodies going to rot. Lord Okran appeared too, the shadow of Kasa’s eagle passing over him. Andry squeezed his eyes shut to block out the images, only to find them staring behind his eyes. Inescapable.

  “We survived, and some part of us regrets it. It doesn’t make sense, that I live while they are in the ground,” he forced out, eyes stinging. “A living squire, and so many dead knights.”

  Dom’s voice rumbled, low in his throat, choked with emotion he did not know how to feel. “If I could, I’d make you a knight right here. You’ve certainly earned it by now.”

  Another figure joined the dead warriors in Andry’s mind: a knight of Galland with an easy smile and a blue-starred shield. Father, Andry thought, calling for someone who would never answer. I can’t even remember his voice.

  He forced himself to look at Dom again, letting reality chase the visions away. He stared at the Elder, green as the forest, gray as stone.

  “I don’t think that’s a path I can walk anymore,” he muttered. It felt like letting go of an anchor and drifting out to sea. Unbound but without direction, free but on treacherous ground. “The Battle of the Lanterns was fought on this land,” he said suddenly, looking back and forth along the willows crowding the riverbank. “Galland and Larsia, warring for a barren border.”

  “I don’t know much of your recent histories,” Dom answered, sounding apologetic.

  Andry nearly laughed. The Battle of the Lanterns was a century ago. “My mother had a tapestry of it in our parlor. The great legions. Galland standing golden and triumphant over the Larsian surrender. I used to stare at it, try to see my own face among the knights, the Lion across my chest, a victory in my hands.” He saw the woven image in his mind, the colors too bright, the soldiers of Galland suddenly hateful, their visages sharp and menacing. “Now I stand against them. Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever wanted. It’s gone.”

  “I feel the same,” Dom said, to Andry’s surprise. “Let someone else be a prince of Iona. I want no part of that place, a haven for cowards and selfish fools.” The Elder sucked in a breath, chest rising and falling. He glanced at the willow where their great hope slept, small beneath her cloak. “Cortael never told me about Corayne.”

  Andry followed his gaze. “To keep her safe?”

  Dom shook his head. “I think he was ashamed.”

>   The squire felt his teeth gnash together, both in anger and to bite back a curse. I will not insult a dead man. “Then he never knew her,” he replied instead, eyes still leveled on the willow. A wind rustled the branches, revealing Corayne nestled among the roots. Brilliant, brave Corayne. “No parent could be ashamed of a daughter like that.”

  “Indeed,” Dom answered, his voice oddly thick.

  “It’s all right to miss him though. It’s all right to feel this hole.” The advice was as much for himself as it was for Dom.

  As before, the Elder sniffed, turning to stone. “Sorrow is a mortal endeavor. I have no use for it.” He jumped up from the boulder, his face wiped clean of any emotion.

  Andry joined him, standing with a shake of his head. “Sorrow touches us all, Lord Domacridhan, whether we believe in it or not. It doesn’t matter what you call the thing ripping you apart. It will still devour you if given the chance.”

  “And how do I defend against such a thing, Squire?” the Elder demanded, his voice rising. Luckily, Corayne did not stir. “How do I fight what I cannot face?”

  In the training yard, the knights would bash their gauntlets, clutch hands, pull each other up after a particularly nasty blow. Without thinking, Andry raised his own fingers, palm open, an offer as much as a plea.

  “With me,” he said. “Together.”

  Dom did his very best not to crush the squire’s fingers as they locked hands.

  “It’s your turn for watch,” Andry muttered, wincing under the strength of Dom’s grips.

  But it was worth the pain.