Realm Breaker

by Aveyard, Victoria

  He sighed aloud, sounding fatigued. “Back so soon, Amhara?”

  Sorasa smiled, working the gag out of her mouth, using a combination of her tongue and lips in a well-practiced trick. “Bar-Barase, I see you made lieutenant,” she sneered, nodding to his badge. “Congratulations.”

  The soldier clenched his teeth. “Put the rest in the cells; space them evenly. Keep the immortal chained,” he said wearily, without joy or zeal. “Strip this one bare. Search every inch.”

  Across the room, Corayne made a small noise behind her gag, trying to take a step. A single guard stopped her. Dom himself fought harder, nearly overpowering his six guards, until a seventh caught him around his neck. They struggled even as they were marched away, nudged along at spear and sword point.

  Sorasa shrugged as they went, her hands still bound. “The sooner we get this started, the sooner we can finish.”

  The lieutenant’s lip curled and he waved forward two of the female guards, both of them hardened enough to have been carved from the granite of the Red Pillar. Sorasa let them work, her muscles tight with tension. She stared at the lieutenant’s back, hating him.

  There is nothing so frustrating as an honest officer.

  It didn’t take long. Sorasa Sarn had been strip-searched since childhood. It was a regular occurrence in the Guild, where acolytes were encouraged to steal food, money, or whatever else they could get away with. She barely noticed as they checked over her body, looking for hidden weapons from her scalp to her toes.

  She counted the cells as she passed, and every hairpin turn. Taltora was a labyrinth beneath a fortress, the air dry and cool. They took everything—her belt, her sword, her bow, her daggers, every pouch of precious powder, and, worst of all, the coin purse strapped along her thigh. All that Ionian gold, gone to the vaults of Taltora, where it would only gather dust under the watchful eye of dutiful Lieutenant Bar-Barase. The stiff-necked fool won’t even use it for himself, Sorasa lamented, marching along the passage.

  Four guards marched her along, their swords drawn and raised. Subduing them wouldn’t fix anything. Another six would come running, and she’d end up unconscious and chained in a deeper cell, without even the hope of a candle. No, Sorasa was a model prisoner, her wrists tied behind her back, her leggings, boots, and shirt hastily donned again. Her black hair hung loose over one shoulder, ragged from their journey.

  She heard Valtik around the fourth turn, the old witch rambling in Jydi again. Her voice echoed off the dirt floor and stone roof, a ghost haunting its mausoleum. For once, Sorasa was glad to hear her squawking. She wagged a finger as Sorasa passed, grinning with too many teeth.

  Around the next turn she found Corayne and Andry, an empty cell separating each from the other. Sorasa looked them over, expecting a blubbering mess, especially from the squire. Both stood at the bars, flint-eyed and bold, their gags torn away.

  “Did they hurt you?” Corayne demanded, her fists clenching on the iron.

  Sorasa tossed her head. “Does it look like it?”

  The Elder’s cell faced the others, alone across the aisle. He was half obscured in the dim light, chained against the wall like a rabid animal. Even his neck was bound, forcing him to stand awkwardly straight, his back braced to the stonework. He shifted, clinking his chains.

  “A bit much, don’t you think?” Sorasa said to her guards. “He’s a puppy dog.”

  Dom scoffed, struggling with the chain around his throat.

  The guards did not respond, opening her own cell with the grate of metal on metal, jamming a key in the snarling lock. They shoved her in, wrists still bound, and slammed the cell door before marching back into the passage.

  Their footsteps died away, leaving the five of them in the quiet dark, the only light coming from a single torch. Between the empty cells and the long aisle, no one could brush fingertips, let alone help each other. And with Dom bound as he was, there was little hope of smashing their way out. Their brooding battering ram was no more.

  “This is less than ideal,” Dom growled to the ceiling.

  Corayne kicked up a spray of dirt, exasperated. “That’s one way to put it,” she snapped. “You trusted the bounty hunter.”

  Sorasa took the accusation in stride. She paced her cell, examining the bars for any flaw. “Charlie’s still on the outside.”

  Andry’s scoff echoed. “Oh yes, he’ll certainly come back for us.”

  “He could draw something up,” Corayne offered, looking between them. “A writ or a diplomatic letter to buy us some time?”

  “He won’t get anything past Sigil.” Sorasa kept up her inspection. The bars were dug in, hammered into the ceiling and the dirt floor. She scuffed at the bottom, trying to make a hole. The iron reached too deep. “She’s going to drag us all the way back to Ascal.” Another voyage across hostile seas, to die on the executioner’s block or in the maw of a sea serpent. Exhausting. “Unless we do something about it.”

  “We’re forty feet underground, Sarn,” Dom said in a flat voice. He strained again, his pale face going red with exertion. The bonds didn’t budge.

  “Locked in cages. Chained,” Corayne added, waving a hand at the Elder. “I doubt even you can do something about that.”

  “You’re right,” Sorasa said. Then, with a huff of breath, she jumped straight up, tucking her knees, drawing her bound wrists around her feet. When she landed on her toes, her hands were in front. It was an old trick, taught to every acolyte at the citadel. “Ibalets are just jailors but Taltora is a bitch of a dungeon. The air shafts are too small even for a child. Trust me, I’ve seen it tried.”

  She began to move her wrists over themselves, pulling with each pass of skin on skin. The restraints were good rope, braided and tight, but the knots needed work. Inch by inch, she made room against her flesh. The rhythm was slow, steady, even hypnotic. She sank into it as easily as a warm pool.

  “The only way out is the way we came in. Down the cells, four turns through four rows. Then the guardrooms, the antechamber, and up the gut of the citadel itself. Where you have to charge through the courtyard of the barracks and garrison offices before reaching the street. Then it’s a race to the desert, which few can survive on foot, if they manage to not get run down by mounted cavalry before they hit the dunes.” The others winced as she listed each obstacle, but Sorasa only shrugged, her wrists turning. “Be grateful we’re not in a Treckish prison pit, half-buried in our own refuse. Or Ascal, for that matter, at the mercy of pig-idiot guards who forget to feed their prisoners. No, Taltora is kind compared to those.”

  Her right hand loosed first, squeezing between the bindings. The left followed with a slip, and she tossed the rope around her neck. It would come in handy later, should she need to strangle someone.

  The others watched, wide-eyed.

  “You’ve been in prison before,” Andry said in a flat voice.

  “I’ve been in this prison before,” Sorasa replied. With her hands free, she rolled up the sleeve of her left arm, exposing an intricate tattoo of a bird’s wing.

  “Well?” Corayne leaned her forehead against the bars. Hope flared in her eyes. It was so easy to coax the girl into flame, Sorasa was almost jealous. The ability to hope was driven from me long ago. “We don’t exactly have time to waste. It’s been hours already.”

  Sorasa drummed along the feathers, feeling the flesh of her arm. She stopped at the wing tip and put her teeth to her own skin. “The guards are wise to my ways by now,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

  After a moment, she felt the metal nub of the pin and latched on. It slid from her skin easily, the steel of the thick needle shining crimson. It wasn’t long, the length of a single finger joint. She ignored the sting and the single drop of blood marring her tattoo.

  “But they still can’t figure out how to check a body properly,” she added, triumphant, the needle in her teeth.

  Dom stared in disgust. “Are you going to fix a hole in a shirt?”

  Sorasa didn
’t answer, pulling a second pin from another spot in the bird’s wing.

  “Oh, well done,” Andry said, gasping in fascination.

  “Thank you, Trelland. It’s nice to be appreciated,” she answered as she set to picking the cell lock with her bloody pins.

  Her heart pounded as the door swung open, the hinges mercifully silent. Now what, now what, now what drummed to a crescendo in her head. The guards hadn’t taken her lockpicks, but they had taken everything else. Her gear, Dom’s Elder sword, the Spindleblade. Not to mention there were probably a hundred soldiers between themselves and the street, one of them Sigil of the Temurijon. Sorasa gritted her teeth, trying to remember a more precarious position she had been in and escaped.

  Well, I’ve never tried to save the realm before, so nothing comes to mind.

  Dom’s voice grated in her ears. “What’s next, Sarn?”

  She wanted to slip through his bars and tighten the chain around his neck until he couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. Instead she crossed the aisle, setting to work on Andry’s cell.

  “If your life didn’t depend on getting out of here, I’d say you were gloating, Elder,” she snapped over her shoulder.

  His chains clinked. He drew up his chin as best he could. “The Vedera do not gloat.”

  Andry pushed open his cell door with a grateful nod.

  “Valtik?” he said, looking to the witch. “Any tricks?”

  Still on the dirt floor, Valtik shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Listen for the bells,” she said. For the first time since they met, Sorasa thought the old woman sounded tired, her voice matching her advanced age. “So the bone tells.”

  Andry winced, reaching through the bars to help her to her feet. His expression darkened like a storm cloud. “I’ve had enough of bells to last a lifetime.”

  The picks turned in another lock and Corayne’s cell opened. She spilled out, a whirlwind, a mad horse kicking up dirt. “We can’t go anywhere without the blade,” she said. Her body leaned, compensating for a weight she no longer carried. Without her cloak, without the sword on her back, she looked small and young, a child plucked from her bed.

  Then she gnashed her teeth, stepping into Sorasa’s way. The assassin stared, the child melting away before her eyes.

  “The Spindleblade, Sorasa,” Corayne said, her eyes black as jet.

  “I know,” she hissed, making quick work of Valtik’s lock.

  “Do you think Charlie is still waiting?” Corayne followed close on her heels. Desperation rolled off her in waves.

  “I really can’t say,” Sorasa forced out, prying open the final cell. Dom glowered at her from the wall, awkwardly splayed within his chains. The assassin approached him with her picks bared, raised like daggers. “Try not to bite, Elder.”

  “Why would I?” he snarled back. “Your blood is probably poison.”

  His first wrist came free, then the second. The neck was more difficult: she had to push his hair away to find the padlock holding the chains in place.

  She chuckled to herself, unlocking his feet. “Only a little,” she said as he fell to the floor, a heap of sore muscles.

  Corayne was right: there was no time to waste. But Sorasa found herself wishing they were deeper in the cells of Taltora, if only to buy a few more seconds to think. They were running into oblivion, with no plan and no hope of finding the light on the other side. It was well into the night by now, but that would mean little until they made it outside. Past the guardrooms, the garrison, the citadel itself . . .

  Her mind spun, hunting for opportunity.

  For the first time in her life, Sorasa Sarn found none.

  The door loomed, cedar planks banded with iron, its hinges fat and heavy. She imagined it splintering under Dom’s weight, opening onto a room full of soldiers armed to the teeth.

  Our only hope is surprise. Get a sword, get a dagger, get any weapon we can. Fight until numbers are back on our side. Let Dom do the heavy lifting. I could manage the rest.

  And above all else, she knew, keep Corayne an-Amarat alive.

  Dom stared at the door, his face pulled in concentration. Sorasa knew he was listening, trying to figure out exactly who and how many were on the other side.

  “I’ll take down whoever I can,” he murmured, staring around at them. Even Valtik stood in front of Corayne, with Andry shifting to protect them both, his long arms stretched out.

  The squire met the Elder’s eye, exchanging stern nods.

  “With me,” the boy said, resolute.

  “With me,” Domacridhan of Iona echoed, taking as many steps back from the door as he dared. Two, three, ten. Until long yards stretched between himself and the wood.

  He lunged, a blur, sprinting so quickly Sorasa felt the air stir around her. She braced, willing him through the door, telling herself to follow, as close as lightning to thunder.

  The door gave beneath his shoulder, cracking on its hinges, falling flat like a drawbridge. He kept his balance, staying on his feet to pound through, nearly colliding with an oak table. Instead he leapt over it, spinning, lithe as a deer in the forest.

  Sorasa burst into the room, clamping down on the fear rattling between her teeth. She waited for the sting of swords, the cut of daggers, the bashing blow of a shield or fist.

  Nothing came.

  Sigil sat in a chair, her overlarge boots resting on the table, legs crossed at the ankles. She had a chicken leg in one hand, a smear of grease over her lips. A forelock of dark hair fell over one eye. She looked from the Elder to Sorasa, a smile in her eyes as she sucked meat off the bone.

  “Two hours to get out of a cell,” she chuckled. “Sarn, I think you’re losing your touch.”

  Their weapons fanned over the tabletop, the Spindleblade safe in its sheath. Sorasa’s blood soared, singing with adrenaline. Her mask of indifference slipped, showing a true smile.

  “Sleeping draft?” she said, angling her head at the ceiling.

  “You’re not the only one who knows her way around poison and powder,” she answered. “These soldiers certainly can drink. The entire garrison went down like a baby.”

  “Good you came to your senses, Bounty Hunter. To betray us is to betray the realm, and your own survival.” Dom glowered, snatching his weapons from the table.

  Sigil basked in his judgment. “I didn’t betray you, Elder. Or, at least, I didn’t betray you for long,” she added.

  “And what did you learn from two hours with the citadel garrison?” Corayne asked, returning the Spindleblade to her back. She breathed a sigh of relief as it slid home, her shoulders dropping. “That was your aim, right?”

  “Smart girl,” she answered. “The Gallish soldiers had a chatty captain, not to mention stupid. He was happy to trade news—I think he wanted to share in my earnings, or my bed. I had no interest in either, of course.” Sigil fiddled with the edge of her ax. “But he did say they aren’t the only Gallish troops in Ibal. Two hundred soldiers arrived a week ago, sailing right into Almasad.”

  Andry balked. “The Queen can’t send that many soldiers into a foreign kingdom, not without a declaration of war.”

  “I doubt she minds,” Corayne muttered. “Did he tell you where they were going?”

  Sigil raised her chin, catching Sorasa’s eye. After so many years, they shared an understanding, a familiarity. The assassin saw reluctance in the bounty hunter, perhaps even fear.

  “An oasis on the Aljer coast,” she said. “Called Nezri.”

  Sorasa felt that fear too, and let it be her guide.

  Mirrors on the sand.

  It had been years since the daughter of Ibal had ridden its deserts, a sand mare beneath her, flying over the dunes she was born to. There was nothing quite like it. Not standing at the prow of a ship, nor the bed of a chariot. Not even leaning into the wind at the edge of a cliff, the entire realm splayed out like a blanket of green and blue, all the world in your teeth. In the heart of Sorasa Sarn, there was no thrill to match a desert at night, moving swi
ftly below clearest stars, the cold, clean wind in her hair, the only sound her heartbeat and the shifting of ancient sand.

  She lay back in the saddle, thighs clenched tight to keep her seat as her spine hit leather, her eyes on the heavens. The oil-black sand mare shuddered beneath her, galloping in perfect, steady rhythm. With the breeze on her face and the stars above, Sorasa cleared her mind, emptying her head of Spindles and Elders, Corblood girls and enchanted blades. It was a Guild tactic, to seek clarity through peace.

  Sorasa had never been much good at it.

  She sat up again, the reins back in hand and her boots in the stirrups. The mare surged beneath her, eager to run. The other mounts responded in kind, the horses’ hooves like meteors across the sand.

  How Charlie had procured seven sand mares, black and red and golden, Sorasa did not know. But she was certainly glad he had. There was no creature so fast, no beast so hardy. The miles passed in a blur, the sky wheeling toward dawn.

  With the right provisions and good planning, the Great Sands of Ibal were easy to navigate. It’s the sun that’ll kill you, not the stars. They set their course by the constellations, thundering a line over the dunes. Sigil took the lead, with Dom at her side. They rode neck and neck, testing each other, her hair flattened to her skull, his trailing like a flag of hammered gold.

  They raced toward a Spindle torn open, spilling forth the monsters of Meer.

  The realm of oceans, surrounded by a sea of sand dunes. Sorasa could not comprehend it, but so much was beyond her understanding these days. She narrowed her focus to what she could control and could accomplish. Another Guild tactic. All I can do now is ride and outrun a doom like the rising sun. She felt it now, a sword at her neck. Taristan and What Waits, their hands outstretched to seize the realm. And another blade hung over her, closer and closer with every second.

  Return and I’ll pick your bones clean.

  She heard Lord Mercury’s voice in her head, clear as the stars in the inky black. Their citadel was to the north, too far to see, miles off on the coast, where sands met cliffside. But she dared not look. The horse might shift beneath her, the path might change. Sorasa Sarn might lose all control and bring her bones home.