Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  “And what was Simon doing?”

  “He thinks I’m the Sun Queen,” she said, because she couldn’t find the will to think of a lie. “He lied to me so I would leave my home and fight a war for him.”

  “Are you the Sun Queen?” Patrik gestured at her hands. “Is that what those are for? What did they call them in the Old World? Castings?”

  Something inside her gave way. Wherever he was trying to lead her with his questions, she had no desire to follow.

  “I can’t talk about this,” she said, and hurried away through the trees, searching. When she at last found Jessamyn, the girl was sitting in the feed shed by the light of a small fire, braiding her hair into a tight plait.

  Blessedly, she was alone.

  Eliana shut the door behind her. “What did you see when we were in that last cell?”

  “I saw you turn rigid,” Jessamyn replied at once. “Your eyes filled with tears, and you kept convulsing as if you were trying to get away from someone, or something, but you couldn’t move. Your eyes paled, though not as completely as the physician’s. You cried out, terrified of something. I worried that whatever was happening would kill you.” Jessamyn tied off her braid and tossed it over her shoulder, her expression keen. “Why? What did you see?”

  Eliana hesitated, then sat down in the dirt beside the fire. “I’m not sure how to explain it.”

  “Or if you should explain it.”

  Eliana looked at her sharply. “Perhaps.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve seen something like that happen,” Jessamyn said, leaning forward to adjust the fire. “An adatrox, or someone working for the Empire, goes fuzzy-eyed and strange. Or in the case of the adatrox, more fuzzy-eyed than usual. And someone nearby collapses, or seizes, or does something out of character to hurt themselves or others.”

  Jessamyn sat back on her heels. “Do you know what that means? You don’t have to tell me, especially if it’ll be safer for me not to know. I rather like my shitty life. But do you know what it means?”

  “Yes,” Eliana said simply.

  “Well, that’s a comfort, to know that at least someone understands what’s happening in this world.”

  “No, that’s not quite right,” Eliana said, hugging her middle. “I know what it means, it’s been explained to me, but I don’t understand it. Or rather, I understand some of it but not all, and what I do understand makes me wish—”

  She subsided abruptly, choked by the sudden rise of tears. She worked so diligently to suppress them that her throat ached, ready to split in two.

  After a moment, Jessamyn moved to crouch between her and the flames. She took Eliana’s hands in her own, callused ones, gingerly inspecting.

  “Your bandages need changing,” she observed.

  “Yes,” Eliana agreed.

  Jessamyn traced the lines of Eliana’s castings with her fingers. “Does whatever you know about this war have something to do with these?”

  Eliana nodded. “Yes.”

  Jessamyn glanced up at her. “Do they hurt you?”

  “Sometimes,” Eliana said. “Hence the bandages.”

  “Can’t you take them off, even for a little while?”

  “I’m afraid to.”

  “They’re dangerous?”

  “I’m dangerous,” Eliana whispered. “I’m a monster, in fact.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Jessamyn pressed Eliana’s hands gently together, between her own. “Is it awful,” she said with a little smile, “that knowing you’re dangerous makes me want to kiss you?”

  Not until that moment did Eliana realize how desperately she needed to be kissed—not by anyone who knew her or wanted things of her, but by someone with a gentle touch who expected nothing in return but to be kissed back.

  “If it is awful,” Eliana replied, leaning gratefully into the warmth of Jessamyn’s body, “then I don’t care.”

  Their lips met softly, and Eliana at once felt the tension in her shoulders melt down her arms and out her fingers. She smiled a little against Jessamyn’s mouth and gloried in the realization that this was a girl who excelled at kissing.

  “You’re crying,” Jessamyn murmured, gently nibbling on Eliana’s lower lip. “Should I stop?”

  “Talking, yes,” Eliana said, her eyes fluttering closed. “Kissing, no.”

  Jessamyn hummed a little, delighted. She cupped Eliana’s head in her hands, gently bearing down on her to deepen her kisses, slowly, luxuriously, until Eliana’s head spun and her skin tingled. When Jessamyn rose to her feet, extending her hand, Eliana took it at once, feeling hazy, and allowed Jessamyn to lead her to the tiny pallet a few steps away—Jessamyn’s own shabby coat, arranged over neat piles of leaves and old straw.

  “Usually, I’m not one for sex,” Jessamyn confessed, once they’d settled on her coat. She studied Eliana’s face, brushed Eliana’s hair out of her eyes. “But I do like kissing and being held, and there’s something about those hands of yours that makes me somewhat interested in the deed, for once.”

  Eliana’s head buzzed. She felt sheltered in the arms of this girl. Jessamyn kissed her throat, and the warmth of her lips banished Eliana’s dark thoughts, leaving her golden and soft.

  “Then I’ll indulge you,” Eliana whispered. She hooked her arms around Jessamyn, slid her hands up Jessamyn’s shirt, and splayed her caged hands across her bare back.

  With a breathy laugh, Jessamyn shuddered. “You’ve got the idea,” she said, and then she shifted atop Eliana, locking their hips together, and began slowly to move.

  • • •

  Gunfire awoke Eliana.

  She sat straight up, holding her breath.

  Beside her, Jessamyn jumped to her feet. She grabbed her gun, slapped on her weapons belt, shoved her knives into their sheaths.

  “Come on,” she cried before bolting out the door.

  Eliana fumbled for her own knives and stumbled outside into a dim morning. A new, cool wind tossed the pines above. Over the distant hills, a storm approached, and a steady rain stippled the ground.

  The camp was chaos—refugees running for shelter, Gerren herding a few of the children into a ravine, Patrik shouting orders. The two old men who lived in the cottage had loaded up a battered wagon with the Caebris prisoners. Their shaggy horse stamped nervously, prancing in its yoke, and the wagon itself sagged beneath the weight of too many passengers. The old men snapped the reins, shouting at the horse to move.

  Eliana ran toward Patrik’s voice. The coming storm muted all other sounds but those of battle. It was a dim world—churning slate-blue sky, swaying black pines, the rocky brown soil, gray piles of dead pine needles. Gunfire pierced the air like spat nails. Eliana ran low to the ground, her boots slapping the earth, and at last found Patrik at the low stone wall where he had stood on watch. He crouched behind it, weapon trained on whatever lay beyond. Harkan and Jessamyn flanked him.

  Eliana raced over and slammed against the stone next to Harkan right as a bullet struck the wall, sending sprays of rock flying.

  “What is it?” she cried. “Adatrox?”

  “And something else,” Harkan replied grimly, the rain washing blood from his cheeks.

  A chill raced down her spine. “Crawlers?”

  Patrik glanced at her, his expression grave and significant. “And beasts.”

  Eliana peeked over the wall, her nose stinging with the tang of gunpowder—and saw at once what Patrik meant.

  Just out of reach of their weapons fire, prowling along the low stone wall at the far end of the paddock, were three dark shapes. Eliana’s first thought was mountain lions, for they moved sinuously and had thin tails nearly as long as their bodies.

  But then one of them reared its head and let out a horrible, flat cry, like a slow drag of blade against blade.

  Eliana’s blood ran cold. She’d
never heard that sound before, but the look on Patrik’s face told her everything she needed to know.

  “Cruciata,” she whispered.

  Jessamyn cursed. “You’re sure?”

  “What are they?” Harkan asked tensely.

  “Vipers,” Patrik said. “Their hide is tough, but they’re vulnerable beneath their chins, and at the start of their hindquarters, where leg meets belly.”

  But then came another piercing cry, and when Eliana looked over the wall once more, she saw the three beasts leap over the fence and rush toward them through the woods—just as three others dropped from the trees, wings spread wide. They were small and slender, scaled jewel-green and blood-red, with wide, hook-tipped wings. They sliced so quickly through the air that Eliana felt dizzy watching them.

  “Raptors!” Patrik cried, gesturing at the sky. “Shoot them!”

  Immediately Harkan and Jessamyn trained their guns on the raptors, but the beasts spun and spiraled, too fast to fix on. Bullets flew uselessly through the air.

  Then one of the raptors dove.

  “Get down!” Harkan cried.

  The others ducked, flattening themselves against the ground, the wall.

  Eliana sprang to her feet, grabbed Arabeth from her hip, and stood tall for as long as she dared. The raptor approached in one blink, two—and then, as it neared her, its talons outstretched, its yellow eyes wide and pitiless, she threw herself to the ground at the last moment and rolled away in the mud, barely evading the raptor’s grasp. It spun away and turned in the air with a furious shriek.

  She pushed herself up and flung Arabeth at the creature’s exposed belly. The blade struck true, and though the raptor tried to fly away, it soon faltered, crashing to the ground.

  Eliana ran for it, yanked Arabeth from its belly, and turned to face the others, triumphant.

  Her stomach dropped to her toes.

  Two more raptors swooped down from the trees to chase the fleeing refugees through the remains of camp. They dove and grabbed, flying back up into the trees with their screaming prey clutched in their claws, and then dropped them. Skulls cracked open against stone, terrified screams abruptly silenced.

  Gerren ran out from the orphans’ ravine, rifle slung over his shoulder. He threw himself down behind a felled, half-rotted tree and fired at every cruciata he could find, but there were too many of them—at least a dozen, perhaps more—and they were too fast to kill, too alien, too other. One dropped after Gerren’s bullet struck its chest and crashed into the roof of Jessamyn’s shed.

  But only one.

  Another dove for the old men’s wagon, grabbed one of the freed prisoners, and returned to the air. It tossed the woman high, caught her in its grinning beaked mouth, shook her viciously until her screams ceased. Another alighted upon the poor frightened horse, sinking its talons into the creature’s hindquarters. The old men jumped off, helped the surviving prisoners out of the wagon. They scattered through the woods—some running for the city, others for the wilderness.

  The sky was thick with swarming raptors—red and green, deadly jewels against a canvas of gray rain. They weren’t alone. Adatrox followed, and others did too—humans loping like apes, like wolves with mismatched legs. Crawlers. Women transformed into monsters.

  Gerren desperately reloaded his rifle.

  Shots fired from across the paddock every few seconds, keeping Patrik, Jessamyn, and Harkan, and the others pinned behind the wall, in a gathering puddle of mud and blood. The adatrox were using the cruciata as a first offensive wave and the crawlers as a second, making their own kills that much easier. But how could they do such a thing—control women more monster than human and thoughtless violent beasts from another world?

  Eliana watched death come inexorably for them through the trees. Sounds fell away; she focused on the in and out of her breath.

  An angel had to have been working through the adatrox, using their vacuous minds as a way station to puppeteer both the monsters they had made and the monsters they had awoken in the Deep.

  A general, maybe, in an outpost some miles away.

  Or the Emperor himself, even from across the sea. Sniffing her out from thousands of miles away.

  I have her now, Rielle, and you can do nothing to save her.

  Eliana stepped back from the wall, her heart pounding in her ears. She half expected the Emperor to walk laughing out of the trees.

  Found you!

  Patrik shouted at Dasha to look left, just before one of the crawling vipers pounced and grabbed her by the throat with a wide mouth of serrated black teeth.

  Another viper leapt onto the stone wall and swiped at Harkan with long, webbed claws. Jessamyn jumped up and slashed her knife across its leg. It snapped its head around, screeching. Harkan, on the ground, fired one wild shot into its belly. The beast fell, but not before a lash of its hooked tail caught Jessamyn across her leg.

  She collapsed with a cry, clutching her right thigh. Harkan caught her, helped lower her to the ground, pressed his hands against her wound.

  “El, do something!” he shouted. “Your castings!”

  She looked down at them. They hummed, warm and vibrating, like queer metal spiders come to life on her palms.

  Her mind protested: the explosions at Caebris. The fire in the Nest. The storm in Karajak Bay.

  The Blood Queen.

  The Kingsbane.

  Her blood runs in your veins.

  But her blood, oh, her blood cared nothing about danger or mothers who ended the world. Her blood was rising to meet the hum of her castings, pressing feverishly against the underside of her skin.

  Her blood knew what it wanted.

  New gunfire rang out—sharp, precise. Eliana looked up. Two raptors fell from the sky. A third. A fourth.

  She ran for the wall, crouched next to Patrik, wiped the rain from her face. “Who’s shooting? Not Gerren?”

  Patrik’s eyes were fierce and bright beneath the sopping mess of his hair. He nodded at the paddock’s left wall, some fifty yards away. “It’s Simon.”

  29

  Rielle

  “I have begun to wonder, as have Marzana and Ghovan, about the possibility of using our power to heal those who have suffered great injury in our service. They fight for us, for our entire kind, and so they deserve, in return, everything we can give them. God granted us enough magic to perform great natural acts. Is it not therefore an extension of that power to perform the greatest natural act there is? Giving life to that which lacks life? I must believe this is possible. The empirium is limitless, and we are of the empirium. Therefore, we are limitless.”

  —Surviving journals of Saint Katell of Celdaria, May 24, Year 1531 of the First Age

  Rielle heard the villagers’ screams in her sleep and awoke to the feeling of fire on her skin.

  She cried out in horror and scrambled off the bed, pawing at her arms and torso.

  “Rielle? What is it?” Audric followed her and tried to catch her hands, but she shoved him away. If he touched her, he would burn.

  Evyline and Maylis burst in, the other members of the Sun Guard right behind them.

  Rielle realized the fire was an illusion, a dream remnant. Her nightgown clung to her. Though the floor beneath her bare feet felt like winter polished smooth, her body dripped with sweat.

  For the space of five shaking breaths, she stood with her face pressed against Audric’s chest. He smoothed back the damp knots of her hair.

  “It’s all right, Evyline,” she heard Audric say. “Lady Rielle has had a nightmare.”

  Then Ludivine’s shout came to her, followed by the faint mind-echo of screams.

  Rielle, they’re burning! Hurry!

  She let out a tired sob and detached herself from Audric, fumbling through the dark room for her clothes.

  Audric retrieved his own. “What is
it? What did she say?”

  He knew well the various expressions she wore when Ludivine spoke to her. She felt a burst of tenderness to see him dutifully dressing at her side, ready to go wherever she commanded, without question.

  “Villagers are burning,” she said. “I think there’s been a fire.”

  No. Not a fire. Corien. He’s controlling them. He’s too powerful.

  Where are you?

  Trying to stop him.

  And suddenly Rielle’s mind filled with images given to her by Ludivine: a humble mountain village, a series of stone shelters built into the side of a mountain pockmarked with caves. Four elementals flinging knots of fire. Blackened bodies, lit up where they had fallen, flames persisting even in the snow.

  “It’s Corien,” Rielle said, drawing on her coat. “He’s controlling elementals in a nearby village. He’s making them burn one another.” She was afraid to look Audric in the eye. “I’m sorry. He’ll be there, but we must go to them.”

  “Of course we must.” His voice was unreadable. He fastened his cloak at his throat, flung on his sword belt, and grabbed Illumenor. Together they hurried through the temple, the Sun Guard silent and burnished at their heels.

  • • •

  Ludivine gave them information en route. The village was not far, and the Obex had offered them the use of seven shaggy mountain ponies, solid and sure-footed.

  The village is called Polestal, Ludivine said. Eighty-seven inhabitants. She paused. Now eighty. Seven have died. More are burning, half-alive. Most in the village are elementals. The rest are human slaves.

  Rielle relayed this information to Audric and her guard, shouting through the snow.

  “How are these firebrands overwhelming the other elementals?” Audric asked. “Why are they not fighting back?”

  Corien is confusing them, Ludivine replied. Scrambling their minds. They cannot focus. Their power cannot find its footing.

  After Rielle explained, Audric cursed passionately. “Why is he doing this? To draw you out, I assume, but why? He’s just seen you.”

  Why, Lu?