She suddenly realized all Jenko had been through, and how she’d so unfairly judged him for it. Jenko had done what he could to survive.
She was so tired of watching everything unfold beyond her control.
As she stared at the knife being offered, she felt the sudden need to finally do something. Give myself a sweet release . . . And with that tender look in Jenko’s eyes, she felt those last vestiges of fatigue finally dissipate. Here and now she could finally make her own life better.
Recovering herself slightly, she took the knife from him, their fingers touching in the exchange. The burning feel of his flesh on hers was like a cleansing fire of absolution.
When Jenko released the knife, he looked at first distressed, then puzzled, then completely afraid.
“You know what you must do,” Spades said, her gaze quietly traveling from Ava to the blond Vallè boy. Ava gripped the knife tightly in her fist. It was already covered in the blood of others, but she didn’t care. Her killing move would be swift and sure. Just one thrust and it would be over—all of it would be so finally over.
The Vallè boy stood still, big calf eyes gazing at her without feeling or connection. She brought the blade up, its bloody tip between her and the boy, her hand seizing tight the hilt, her teeth and jaw clenched. Does he know my pleading eyes followed him as he ran the gauntlet of Aeros Raijael’s merciless army? Does he know I prayed to Laijon that he be spared?
Does he know that I will not hurt him?
When she pushed the knife up under his chin, he didn’t waver. His eyes didn’t even widen. She pulled back slightly, hand trembling, eyes blurring over with tears that she could not stop. Quick! And it will be over—
Suddenly the knife was snatched from her hand, and the boy’s throat was a gaping red gash. Jenko’s backhanded slice had opened a wide furrow across the boy’s throat. Blood splashed over Ava’s chest and face. She staggered back as the boy toppled forward, dead.
“Ha!” Hammerfiss laughed. “Young love.”
Jenko stood before Ava now, pretending to wipe the blood from her face. But from the angle in which he stood, nobody could see what he actually did. A clean knife, smaller than the bloody one she had just held, dropped down the neckline of her shift from the palm of his hand. She felt the cold blade slide between her breasts and catch at the leather thong tied around her waist. “Use it wisely,” he whispered. “Use it on Aeros.”
He stepped away from her and stared right at Spades, making a show of ramming the bloody knife he’d used to open the boy’s neck into the sheath at his belt.
Stunned, Ava felt a tremendous need to clean the boy’s blood from her brow. But there was naught she could do but look in astonishment at Jenko.
Spades glared at Jenko too, speaking flatly. “You should have let the girl do what she was meant to do.”
† † † † †
Only when all the remaining prisoners under ten were marching away and the sun had at last danced off the aspen leaves and then bowed below the purple shadows of the Autumn Range did the silver-wolves begin to howl in the mountains far above.
In the cool darkness, Ava followed Spades down to the stream near the meadow where the Leifid oxen still grazed. She dipped her trembling hands into the pure waters and washed the dry blood of an eleven-year-old Vallè boy from her brow.
Aeros Raijael was standing not far downstream on the cool grassy bank.
Bleary-eyed, Ava approached him. Dread coiled like a serpent around her heart when she saw the baby floating away from Aeros. Cold and dead, it bobbed and then sank into the bubbling crystal waters. As she met the White Prince’s icy black eyes, she was glad she had Jenko Bruk’s small knife for company.
Only then, with that thought, did Ava Shay notice that the wraiths had not visited her once this dreadful day.
* * *
Be it man, woman, dwarf, or Vallè, preach any other gospel unto you, that we, the Last Warrior Angels, have not preached unto you let him be accursed. For some may come who would pervert the gospels of Laijon.
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER TWELVE
NAIL
16TH DAY OF THE ETHIC MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
LORD’S POINT, GUL KANA
Ican’t believe I let her die,” Stefan said, hair ruffling in the wind, tumbling against his shoulders as he approached Culpa Barra’s charger and Hawkwood’s roan. The two horses stood at the tether in the stable near Dusty. He stroked the neck of Culpa’s mount first.
“Gisela’s death wasn’t your fault,” Nail said. “You protected her as best you could. I saw you carry her over that bridge in the Roahm Mines before it collapsed. She loved you.” He would never tell his friend it was the blue angel stone that had killed Gisela, not poisoned mushrooms and freezing cold.
The waters of the Saint Only Channel crashed against the breakers behind the stable. The same air that pushed the waves to shore lifted a lock of Nail’s blond hair and let it fall against his cheek. The stiff eddying of the ocean breeze whirled straight past him and into the stable of the Turn Key Saloon, causing him to blink against the swirling dust.
The back side of the Turn Key Saloon and Inn faced the ocean docks along the northwest edge of Lord’s Point. There was a sizable courtyard next to the stables. The Turn Key was no regular common alehouse. It was run by ex-gaolers, the proprietor a gruff fellow named Derry Richrath. The saloon itself was the regular haunt of the gaolers and other such lawmen stationed in Lord’s Point. Derry’s serving boy, Otto, had told Nail that a saloon was the name of any drinking establishment inside city limits near a dock, a place reserved for sailors and pirates, or in the Turn Key’s instance, gaolers. A tavern could be found anywhere. A cantina was an even dirtier place, meant for thieves and cutthroats. Earlier that day Nail had watched from the stables as the gaolers had practiced their various gaoling techniques in the courtyard—most of them involved chaining each other up, prodding each other with poleaxes, and knocking each other down with heavy shields, all of it to the tune of bawdy talk that curdled his ears. One thing the gaolers had taught him: a sensitive man without a rough tongue would never make it as a gaoler.
“I just should have held her tighter that final night,” Stefan said. Nail’s best friend still had the keen eyes and tanned skin of a grayken hunter, but those once confident eyes held a perpetual sadness now. “She was so sick that night. So feverish. So terribly cold.”
“You needn’t feel guilty.” Nail knew Stefan had yet to recover from the death of Gisela Barnwell—the sweet girl who was once Maiden Blue of the Mourning Moon Feast. That feast had been the last night any of them had been happy. It was the night Stefan had won the bow from Baron Bruk in the tournament, a bow that he’d then lost the next day when the army of the White Prince had destroyed Gallows Haven. Shawcroft had given Stefan a Dayknight bow after the Sør Sevier attack, a bow that Stefan had carried with him everywhere, a bow with the name GISELA now carved into its ash and witch-hazel stock. Nail had no such thing to cling to, just a turtle carving around his neck from a girl who had soundly rejected him. And his cold repayment had been to leave Ava with the enemy to die.
The late-afternoon sun felt like both a curse and punishment on his back. He asked Stefan, “At Godwyn’s abbey, remember how Liz Hen accused me of having no heart? Of not caring about Shawcroft’s death? Or caring about anything or anyone, for that matter?”
“Aye,” Stefan answered. “But I wouldn’t listen to anything Liz Hen says.”
“I often wonder if she wasn’t right.” Nail picked up a section of hay from the floor of the stable. “Have I ever cared about anything, or helped anyone but myself?”
“You saw us to safety through the mines and the cold nights in the mountains, Nail. You saved Zane from the sharks when he got knocked into the sea. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”
“But Zane is dead now.” Unable to mask the frustration and pain in his voice, Nail broke
open the hunk of hay in his hands. Hay dust sparkled up into his face. “I stuck a knife into Zane’s heart. So what did it matter that I saved him from the sharks?”
He tossed the hay over the log railing to Dusty, who waited eagerly. The hay bounced off the pony’s snout, scattered under her front legs. She bent to nibble.
“You were brave both times.” Stefan gently patted Culpa’s mount. “You did something the other grayken hunters could not: save Zane. And in the mountains, you did something neither Liz Hen nor I could do: ease his suffering.”
“Zane believed Laijon was awaiting his soul.” Nail was heartsick. “I could see it on his face, Stef. He believed it was Laijon’s will he die.”
There was just so much trauma he could not forget. Some nights he couldn’t even sleep from the weight of it on his mind.
Stefan continued to stroke Culpa’s horse. “Fate took Zane from us. ’Twas not Laijon’s will. If there ever was such a god.”
The wind picked up. Nail considered his friend’s comment. Stefan never was convinced of the truthfulness of The Way and Truth of Laijon, no matter how many Ember Lighting prayers we memorized.
Stefan stepped lightly across a trampled patch of hay toward Hawkwood’s sturdy roan. “How many days we been at Lord’s Point?”
“Nine I think,” Nail answered. “Still waiting for Roguemoore’s brother to arrive.”
Stefan gently combed the mane of Hawkwood’s roan. “The dwarf is getting more uptight the longer we linger. He’s itching to keep moving on, find the rest of those weapons of the Five Warrior Angels. Both he and Godwyn.”
Nail nodded. “I’ve the feeling they ain’t gonna wait much longer for Ironcloud.”
“I’ve a feeling they’re gonna ask for our help again,” Stefan said. “That our part in all this isn’t over yet. Not by half. And I don’t know if I have it in me to carry on with the whole mess.”
“We are tied to them somehow,” Nail said. “All of us. Tied to the dwarf and the bishop. Tied to those weapons, too. I’m not for giving up hope yet.”
“I don’t share the feeling. Though I want to be brave and helpful to our new friends, I just do not fully believe in their cause. What will I do when they finally ask too much of me?”
“When it comes time for you to choose the path you want, I will support what decision you make,” Nail said. “I won’t hold you to any promises I myself have made to the Brethren of Mia.” He himself still harbored reservations about Roguemoore and Godwyn and their motives too; he held no illusions about whether they were still using him in some way. And though he had sworn fealty to the dwarf in the Swithen Wells Trail Abbey, he would not hesitate to break that promise if he was forced to choose between them and his friend Stefan.
The dwarf’s plan, ever since leaving Godwyn’s abbey, had been to meet his brother, Ironcloud, at the Turn Key Saloon in Lord’s Point and then venture farther north to gather the remaining weapons of the Five Warrior Angels. But that plan had gone awry in Ravenker, when Nail and Hawkwood had been separated from the rest of the group. Nail had eventually made it to Lord’s Point with Culpa Barra. Hawkwood was captive of Leif Chaparral and on his way to Amadon in the back of a wagon with the Sør Sevier knight, Gault Aulbrek, and Princess Jondralyn Bronachell. Roguemoore had taken Culpa Barra’s news of Hawkwood and Jondralyn with a heavy heart.
Nail watched Stefan pet Hawkwood’s roan. “You know how I told Godwyn and the dwarf that Jenko Bruk stole the ax and stone and Shawcroft’s satchel?”
“Aye?” Stefan said. “That Jenko joined with the enemy is horrifying.”
“I left much out of that story, Stefan,” Nail went on. “An assassin was with Jenko. He nearly killed me. But Hawkwood saved me. I owe Hawkwood my loyalty.”
“Why did you leave that out?”
“I do not know. Maybe it is because Hawkwood gave me hope, hope that not all men are just looking out for themselves, beholden to ancient texts and prophecies. Thing is,” Nail muttered, “I felt some kind of magic in the battle-ax when I fought Jenko in Ravenker. I need it back, what he stole from me.”
“So you truly believe it was Forgetting Moon we found? You believe the weapons of the Five Warrior Angels are real?”
“I want to.” Nail’s eyes traveled from the stable yard westward across the bay toward the Fortress of Saint Only and the five barely visible Laijon Towers in Wyn Darrè lining the cliffs of Aelathia not seventy miles beyond, just faint needles in the far distance over the blue horizon. I want to believe in something. I want to hope.
The Fortress of Saint Only loomed large over the ocean a mere ten miles from Lord’s Point. It sat high upon a lofty summit of rock some seven hundred feet above the ocean, a pinnacle of rock Godwyn referred to as the Mont. The bishop claimed those in Adin Wyte referred to the fortress as Mont Saint Only rather than the Fortress of Saint Only, as the rest of the Five Isles called it. Whatever its official name, the Mont jutted out into the ocean at the very southern tip of Adin Wyte like the prow of a colossal ship plying the sea. Some said the craggy Mont and the fortress atop it rivaled Amadon Castle atop Mount Albion in sheer size.
On a clear day like today, the Fortress of Saint Only atop the Mont was so breathtaking in majesty it would steal Nail’s breath. The burning beacon atop its loftiest tower captured his eye every time he looked to the west. The ten-mile strip of ocean that separated Saint Only from Lord’s Point was shallow, a mere ten to fifteen feet deep all the way across. And the ebbing tide, for somewhere between four and six hours each afternoon, was so low one could actually walk to Mont Saint Only across the stretch of muddy sand and mire. On sunny days, the sand of the channel would ofttimes bake over. A fleet team of horses could pull a heavy-laden wagon over the crusted sediment. But when the erratic tide rose in the early evening, it rose fast and swift. Nobody could predict the fickle tide. Many unfortunate travelers had been caught in that vast no-man’s-land and drowned. Large ships could not cross the channel, even at the water’s highest. Only smaller vessels dared the journey. And after nightfall, ’twas only foolish sailors who ventured into those waters, even afloat, as merfolk and sharks plied the shallows nightly.
But ever since Aeros Raijael had conquered Adin Wyte five years ago and overtaken Mont Saint Only, few now made that trip over the low tide sands. Most in Gul Kana had assumed the White Prince would launch his attack on Gul Kana across those sands. But as Nail knew all too well, Gallows Haven had been Aeros’ aim all along.
Saint Only was a deserted fortress now. Godwyn had explained how the armies of Sør Sevier had sacked the great stronghold. How Aeros had humiliated Edmon Guy Van Hester, king of Adin Wyte, and then left him to rule his empty fortress in solitude and disgrace. All of it was made worse by the actions of the king’s son, Squireck, who had murdered one of the Quorum of Five Archbishops in Amadon. At the time it had been the most infamous crime in all the Five Isles. It was said that Ser Edmon was so overcome with grief over the loss of his kingdom and his son’s crimes that he now moped about the halls of Mont Saint Only in rags and a broken crown, his throne abandoned to ruin, his Lancer Guard scattered to the winds.
In fact, these last few days, Godwyn had been teaching the four youths from Gallows Haven a lot about the histories of Saint Only and Lord’s Point. He had taken Nail, Stefan, Dokie, and Liz Hen to visit the Lord’s Point Cathedral earlier that morning for Eighth Day service. But the service had been postponed as the cathedral had been full to brimming with refugees from all along the southwestern coast of Gul Kana. Scared and homeless people were pouring into Lord’s Point daily, fleeing the advancing armies of the White Prince and the wave of destruction that followed in their wake.
The cathedral itself was one of the most magnificent structures in Gul Kana—designed in the typical Laijon Cross floor plan. Godwyn had explained that the cathedral’s construction had taken the ancients of the Lord’s Point area over five hundred years to construct. It was begun, Godwyn had said, as most cathedrals were, shortly after the death
of Laijon nearly a thousand years ago. Still, despite its age, the cathedral’s vaulted stone arches and walls were solid, nary a crack to be found. Upon entering the massive edifice, Nail had been struck by the two towering and majestic rows of columns rising up above the nave—twelve on each side—with single trunks in veined Riven Rock marble and capitals with leaf carvings. The columns supported a sequence of round arched arcades and thick wooden beams. There were narrow windows high on the walls, running the length of the nave and transepts, letting in some sun, but the bulk of the light came from the rear of the cathedral above the entrance doors.
Above the sculpted tympanum were three magnificent stained-glass windows. Windows so huge Nail couldn’t even grasp how they had been made, or what held them in place. And just like the stained-glass windows in the Gallows Haven chapel, the art of these splendorous windows was familiar. In the center was an image of Laijon, the five angel stones hovering above Him; white, red, black, green, and blue. Laijon wore shimmering armor and hefted the battle-ax Forgetting Moon. In the left window were two white-robed Warrior Angels, one wielding the sword Afflicted Fire, the other a black crossbow, Blackest Heart. In the right window were the other two Warrior Angels, one wearing the war helm Lonesome Crown, another with the shield Ethic Shroud. Nail had stared at the center window the longest, gazing up at the image of Forgetting Moon, realizing that the artist who’d designed the window had failed to capture the battle-ax’s size and shape in every regard. In the center window below the ax, the artists had also placed five little oddities near the bottom of the frame unlike anything he’d ever seen before—five tiny cloaked knights with silver skulls for faces.
The light from those glorious windows combined had rained in over the throng of Gul Kana refugees who lined every inch of floor space in the building, bathing the nave and people within it in a wondrous array of color as they’d prayed.
The Blackest Heart Page 16