And things right now in the woods seemed awfully odd. Café Colza and Bogg were again wrestling in the dirt. Hans was wary of their surroundings.
And Krista’s senses were also on high alert. She could feel each thin Bloodwood dagger she owned pressing against her flesh, hidden in various parts of her black leather armor. Squateye studied the grayish-tan, ropy thing dangling in the branches. To Krista it looked somewhat organic, like it belonged there in the trees along with the green aspen leaves and scratchy brown pine. She reached out and felt it, finding it was somewhat damp and chilled to the touch, and she had an inkling of what it was. Seemed Squateye had drawn the same conclusion. “I’ve gutted a lot of stag and elk in my day—and this here feels like deer intestines.”
The dwarf followed the length of the wet, gray rope to the edge of the thicket. It was draped from branch to branch, hanging at eye level the whole way, receding off into the dense foliage and out of sight. Squateye proceeded slowly and cautiously, squeezing through the brush and scrub oak, ducking under several prickly pine branches that swooped low over his path. Krista and Hans followed, leaving their Bloodeye mounts with Bogg and the dog and the ponies. Branches clawed at their black boiled leathers as the thicket closed in around them. The sounds of Bogg and Café Colza’s wrestling dissipated. Fifty paces into the dense brush and the three of them broke free, finding themselves in a small clearing rife with the odor of decay. The origin of the mystery lay before them. Hans glanced at Krista. Squateye saw their exchange.
It wasn’t deer intestines after all. It was Ser Aulmut Klingande’s intestines.
They sprang from his sliced-open gut like a bloody vine. Klingande was naked, his pink flesh a stark contrast to the dense green foliage all around. He was also hanging upside down on an upside-down cross, overlapping feet nailed to a stout log by a thick iron spike. Smaller nails impaled both of his wrists. Hanging upside down as he was, the rest of his vitals—heart, lungs, all of it—had dropped straight out all over the ground. Blood had drained from the ragged hole that was his mouth and covered his face and forehead. It pooled, thick and scarlet, on the mound of entrails and forest floor underneath.
This was the very man Black Dugal had sent Krista and Hans to kill ten days ago. They had left him for dead on the floor of his parlor in a pile of his own guts, eyes gouged out. Hans had opened him up. In fact, Dugal himself had been there, disguised as Klingande’s manservant. And now Klingande’s gutted body was here, in a mountain forest north of Rokenwalder, more than a week later. How? Krista asked herself. And why?
“Rotted Laijon almighty!” Bogg said, pushing his way through the brush, Café Colza Bouledogue behind him. The dog immediately attacked the dead body, going straight for the face hanging just above the ground. Nobody attempted to stop him.
“As I say, trust is fleeting,” Squateye sighed, his lone eye fixed on Krista. “Someone else is trying to take credit for this kill.”
Krista looked at Klingande again, her face expressionless.
“And they want us to know about it.” Bogg walked up to the dead man and cocked his own flat-faced head sideways, studying him. “Someone’s performed their own Sacrament of Souls here. A sacrament not fed by my dungeon of inmates, a sacrament not sanctioned by me or Dugal whatsoever.”
Klingande’s skull snapped in Café Colza’s strong jaws.
† † † † †
“You are late,” Black Dugal said with his typical cruel yet mannered charm. A supple cloak of fine black linen swirled about his knee-high leather boots as he led both Krista and Hans into his chamber.
“The tardiness was not our fault,” Hans answered in frustration.
“Lateness is always the fault of the one who is late.” Dugal’s voice was at all times infused with a measured eloquence, even when chastising. Hans said nothing.
Dugal beckoned them both to sit. Krista and Hans settled onto either end of their master’s soft velvet couch. The large room was spicy with incense, dim with sparse candlelight, and plush with thick-spun rugs and lavish tapestries of rich, dark hues. Every piece of furniture was fashioned of the finest polished mahogany. Dugal’s elegant sanctuary was always a place of dense, quiet luxury and brooding shadows, almost primal in its masculinity. Krista felt at home within it.
Though she didn’t rightly know where it was located. The journey to her master’s hidden lair was a maze of narrow underground tunnels and a twisty stretch of long-abandoned stone-cobbled sewers. The entrance to these tunnels was through a dusty, hay-covered corner of a ramshackle stable yard Dugal kept near the docks. It was where they stabled their Bloodeye steeds. Dugal had his own secret stable for Malice, and neither Krista nor Hans was privy to its location.
Dugal took his seat in the soft-cushioned chair across from them, a bronze goblet and fluttering candle on the round wooden table next to him. “So tell me what strange mischief has Bogg rooted out today?”
“The dead body of Ser Aulmut Klingande,” Hans said. His answer came a little hastily for Krista’s taste. She threw him a swift glance of warning, but his attention was fixed on Dugal. “In the foothills between Eark and Rokenwalder. Hanging upside down. Rotted guts draped about the forest like party tinsel.”
A grim cast fell over Dugal’s eyes. It was subtle, but Krista could sense a worried tension, a tightening of his posture in the chair that had not been present moments before. In fact, it was tension that she had never witnessed in her master, ever. “In the foothills between Eark and Rokenwalder?” Dugal ran a languid hand over the flickering flame of the candle atop the end table next to his chair.
“Aye.” Hans watched Dugal’s hand and the flame dancing underneath.
“You strayed from the Eark Road?” Dugal leaned forward slightly, hand still wavering over the candle flame. “What took you into the foothills, into those woods?”
“The nose on Bogg’s damned stupid mutt took us into those woods.”
Dugal’s expression relaxed into wistfulness as he took the bronze goblet from the table and drank it down with a long swallow. Then he placed both hands in his lap, long fingers flexing before coming to rest. “So the body was upside down then?”
Krista felt Hans’ eyes watching her now. But she ignored him. This was Hans’ story. His confessional. She would not speak unless directly called upon. Hans had already made his mistakes and must live with them, see them to the end.
“As you know from your Sacrament of Souls,” Dugal went on, “there is much one can learn from the dead. How did Bogg’s bulldog react to the corpse?”
Hans answered, “The dog ate Klingande’s fat fucking face right off his fat fucking head is how he reacted.”
“So, Hans Rake, why tell me any of this?”
Hans shrank back in the couch, dark brows and pinprick eyes scrunched in concentration, concern. It was never good when Black Dugal called them by their full names and not their monikers. Hans was Shadowwood. In Krista’s opinion, he should not answer any more questions.
“I tell you because you are my master,” Hans responded. “Because you asked.”
“One needn’t answer every question posed,” Dugal said with a certain coolness that sent an icy prick of unease up Krista’s spine. “One must learn to keep some things to oneself if one expects to be a successful Bloodwood and fur trader.” Dugal let the last words dangle, a faint red gleam from the candlelight reflecting in his eyes. “Am I not right, Crystalwood?” His eyes fell on her.
A coldness passed through Krista’s bones as she nodded, not daring to look at Hans, knowing his eyes must be lancing shards of pure jealousy her way.
Fur trader?
Her mind was instantly back in Eark, shuffling about the docks of the strange town dressed as a toothless old woman in tattered old rags, hauling about heavy crab traps. She’d stuffed hurion tac paste in her cheeks, nostrils, and even eyelids to make her face look especially deformed. The same paste mixed with strong birch whiskey and spread over the skin could cause quick
, deep wrinkles that would last for hours. But going about looking completely wrinkled and toothless wasn’t the thing she’d been most proud of, what had really sold her disguise—it was the calluses on her hands. A woman selling crabs for a living surely needed calluses on her hands. Krista had sold a lot of crabs.
Hans had been a dashing, successful young fur trader from Nordmire, plying the bartenders and whores of Eark with his riches, making a grand show of things. But from the beginning he’d thought the entire trip a waste of his time. He’d just wanted fun and amusement. Krista knew how important going about in plain sight—yet completely unseen—was to a Bloodwood’s schooling. That was why she had taken care in her disguise.
She risked a quick glance Hans’ way. He was not amused. The tattoos that laced the skin along the sides of his head and neck and above his ears could not mask his shameful blush. Deciphering truth from lies is part of your test, Squateye had said. Trust is fleeting, whilst betrayal is timeless. Krista’s mind swirled. Was Dugal in Eark? Was the entire trip to see if we could fool him? Or perhaps Bogg or Squateye has already told him about our disguises. Or is Dugal just that clever? She recalled how convincingly he’d played the part of Aulmut Klingande’s manservant. Everything about Black Dugal is also a lie.
“I should have slain Aulmut Klingande long ago,” Dugal said softly. “But alas, I saved him for you, my favorite pets, and now I fear that in my delay the man has come back to bite me.” He looked at Krista, asking, “Who are you?”
“Crystalwood,” she answered without hesitation, unbidden. That the name came to her so quickly surprised even her. Have I really abandoned my former life so readily? She could scarcely picture her father’s face anymore. Gault Aulbrek, where have you gone? He’d left when she was only seven and had made only sporadic visits from the battlefields of Adin Wyte after that. She’d last seen him at twelve years old. He had gifted her with a thin blue ribbon she still kept tied around her ankle. But I never did know him well. As a very young girl she’d idolized her father. But for the last ten years, she’d been watched over mostly by two evil strangers, Aevrett Raijael and Black Dugal. Whenever she heard her new name, Crystalwood, she thought of her old life before. She didn’t know why, but she did. All this spun through her mind whilst staring straight at her master, unblinking.
And Dugal found her gaze and held it, saying, “You are like that final snowflake that lights upon the very pinnacle of a snowcapped mountain. The crystal-clear flake that sets the entire mountain of ice thundering down the slope to crush all in its path.” His hand floated over the fluttering flame of the candle again. “No one can foresee what each day will bring.” He paused, red-hazed eyes lying heavy on her now. When he spoke again, his words were soft but pointed. “I have a task for you, my crystal snowflake. Do you accept?”
She nodded without hesitation.
“Perhaps our king thinks he can dance with me,” Dugal said, dark eyes now observing his own hand as it floated gracefully over the candle. “Well, I shall show Aevrett Raijael differently.”
There was danger here now. Dark currents of it. Krista felt it swirling about. It almost set her into a panic. But vestiges of caution allowed her to think rationally. She said nothing. But her heart jumped and thundered in her chest.
“You must pay our king a visit at Jö Reviens,” Dugal continued, his eyes now piercing into hers. “You will pay him a visit in secret. He can never know you were there. His five Knights Chivalric can never know. They must never sniff you out. And they are all five of them clever and keen of intellect and most deadly. So this is no light task I give you.”
He wants me to spy on the king! Krista sensed that Hans was staring daggers at her, beside himself with envy. She met the commanding gaze of her master and dipped her head in acquiescence, not knowing how to feel. She had not seen King Aevrett Raijael nor set foot in his grand palace Jö Reviens in five years. And now I go to spy on him as a member of the Bloodwood assassins. It seemed like grand treason. But she hated the king and would do it with relish.
She held no fondness for King Aevrett and his queen, Natalia. The queen’s mind had clearly been eaten by the wraiths. The woman was crazy. Krista recalled her time at Jö Reviens. Torturous and lonely. Most days she’d wished she could just be a regular part of Aevrett’s court, running through the grasses of the palace tournament yards, barefoot and breathless, frolicking with the other children of royalty. But that had not been her life. Aevrett’s five Knights Chivalric bodyguards had ruled her life, keeping her captive in a small room next to the queen’s chamber most days. She recalled with a shudder the torture she’d suffered because of Natalia’s dementia. Things she’d blocked from her mind. Tortures she did not want to ever remember.
It had been a shock when Spiderwood had set her free and brought her to Black Dugal. The Spider had rescued her at Dugal’s behest. That first little while under Dugal’s tutelage had been rough. Krista had hated it, been afraid. But she had never given voice to her fears. Then she began to see the freedom in becoming a Bloodwood. She had grown to adore her two Vallè classmates, Seita and Breita. They had become like sisters to her. She ofttimes wondered where they now were. What Bloodwood missions had they been given? And will I ever see them again?
“You will not send me into Jö Reviens too?” Hans finally asked, a bitter twist to his mouth. “But you will send her?”
“You have your instructions, Crystalwood.” Black Dugal crushed the flame of the candle between two fingers, stood, and silently exited his lair, not looking once at Hans.
* * *
A defiled woman is rendered worthless in the eyes of Laijon. Even under the yoke of abuse, at some point a woman must face her own complicit nature and seek the forgiveness of Laijon.
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AVA SHAY
24TH DAY OF THE ETHIC MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
BAINBRIDGE, GUL KANA
The morning before the battle of Bainbridge, Ava sat with the injured Bloodwood in the covered wagon. She had just finished carving a small beetle out of birch wood with the knife Jenko had given her. She’d kept the knife hidden in the ashes of a gold incense censer she liked to carry with her. The Bloodwood had taken keen delight in her carving.
“Can I keep it when you’re done?” he asked, setting aside the little black book he always wrote in.
“As long as you don’t tell Aeros about the knife.”
“A girl with a gift for such fine craftsmanship.” The Bloodwood took the beetle. “How could I possibly rat her out?” His words were innocent enough, but his eyes were not. Still, he admired her carving for some time before slipping it into the folds of his polished leather tunic, which he had just recently taken to wearing again, his wounds still carefully bandaged underneath. The Spider’s clothing always smelled of cloves. She had grown used to his scent, as she had grown used to him.
He was good-looking, she’d noticed, but in a cruel way. The cruelty was in his mouth, his lips. You can always tell the cruelty of a person in their mouth, her mother had once said after a cruel-mouthed thief had been caught trying to steal one of their pigs when Ava was a small girl. The Spider had a cruel mouth that matched his red-streaked eyes. Still, all things considered, he treated her well enough in the wagon. He treated her with respect. And their time together was not unpleasant.
When Aeros had first asked her to tend to the Bloodwood’s injuries, she had been mortified. But she had done as best she could. The blow to the Spider’s head combined with the flogging from Hammerfiss had caused some gruesome damage to his flesh. His back was crisscrossed with wounds.
Spiderwood had been a silent travel companion in the beginning. But as of late he had been opening up. His conversations, though surface level, had sped their bumpy wagon ride along.
He pulled a vial of some medicine from his tunic and drank. “Some potions work to stave off the effects of poisoning,” he said. “Some help
speed the healing of any injury, even injuries as grievous as mine. Mind you, a skull fracture or a brain injury is different, incurable by any potion known to man. I suffered a hard blow in Ravenker. But I do not think my skull was fractured. I will regain all my faculties eventually.”
His eyes hardened. “And then I will kill Hammerfiss.” He smiled at her, then winked. “You won’t rat me out for admitting such, will you?”
“You should kill them all,” she said. “Everyone in Aeros’ army is evil. They’ve no loyalty to anyone, not even you.”
“My master, a man named Black Dugal, taught me that one must learn to play things to one’s advantage at all times. Even with Aeros. No matter what rapes the Angel Prince commits, play it to your advantage and it will all turn out well in the end.”
“Don’t try convincing me it’s all right,” she answered. “Rape is never something that will turn out ‘well’ for anyone.”
“I was talking of my own problems,” he said. Though he was sitting, he made his best effort to bow to her. Then he produced a bottle of wine from under his blankets. Popped the cork and smelled the aroma. He pulled a goblet from under the covers next. He then made such a ceremony of his sharing of the wine, Ava almost thought she might see some kindness in him. But she did not want to drink from the goblet he held out to her.
“I must somehow thank you for your tender healing touch,” he said. “Drink.”
The Blackest Heart Page 27