“A pretty thing,” he said, eyeing the slender blade then looking pointedly at his own wider, longer sword, “tell me, what’s it for? To pick my teeth with after a meal? Or perhaps to butter my bread. Yes,” he said, nodding, “I believe it would work quite well.”
“Say what you want,” Adina said, her face turning red with anger, “but its steel is sharp, and it will cut you quick enough, if you make me use it. Now, get out of the way and let me pass.”
The guard cocked his head to the side, studying her. “Forgive me, my Queen, but that is one order that I’m afraid I must decline. You see, I have plans for that reward money—oh yes, they told the few of us they recruited about a significant reward should we find and apprehend you—big plans. And unless you’ve got a few sacks of gold hidden away in that dress somewhere? No,” he said, “I thought not. Now, put that toy away. They will pay me the same whether you’re dead or alive, but I’d really rather not hurt you, if I can help it.”
“The only way I’ll put this sword down is if you kill me,” Adina hissed through gritted teeth.
“My, but you are beautiful, even angry,” he said. Then he let out a long sigh. “Very well, if you insist.”
In a moment, he was on her, swinging his sword in a wide arc meant to overpower her, but Adina remembered Captain Gant’s words. Use your strengths. You’re fast so be fast. Instead of meeting Raste’s blade with her own, Adina hopped back, lashing out with her thinner, lighter blade, and Raste cried out as her sword cut a bloody line down his sword arm. He did not drop his own blade, as she had hoped, but he growled in pain, taking a step back as his free hand went to the wound on his arm. “You bitch,” he said, “I’ll kill you for that.”
“And what of the tavern owner?” Adina said. “She claimed she knew you—or was she in on it too?”
“Of course she was,” the man growled, “not that it’ll matter to you soon.”
He rushed her then, his sword leading and between her anger and her fear, Adina felt as if all of the techniques and maneuvers that Brandon Gant had taught her flew from her mind. Yet, when the man’s sword came slicing at her, her body acted on its own, her feet stepping to the side, her blade flying up to parry the blow. The impact nearly sent the sword flying from her hands, but she managed to hold on, spinning and lashing out with her blade again before the man could recover and cutting a horizontal line across his chest, the blade slicing cleanly through his shirt.
The cut was not deep, but Raste cried out in pain and staggered back, studying the bloody cut in surprise. “Just let me go, Raste,” Adina said, nearly pleaded. “Ridell and the others don’t have to know about any of this, okay? We can both go on about our lives and that can be the end of it.”
The man stared at her blankly for a moment, then his expression twisted with rage. He charged her, bellowing in fury and swinging his sword in with a two-handed grip, a horizontal slash that would have cut her nearly in half if it had hit. It didn’t, of course, as Adina ducked beneath it. The man shouted again, his sword coming in great, sweeping blows, but after hours spent with Aaron and training with Captain Gant, the guard seemed impossibly slow, almost clumsily so, and his footwork was adequate at best.
Adina dodged the blows when she could and parried them when she needed to until the man grew tired and the strikes came even slower, fewer and farther between each, and he was panting and covered in sweat as if he’d just run a race. “Bitch,” he growled, swinging his sword again and, this time, Adina evaded the blow and lunged forward just the way the captain had drilled her on so many times in Baresh.
The blade went into the guard’s chest easily, too easily, and Adina imagined she could feel the blade sliding into her own heart. They stood there for a second, both of them frozen, the captain looking at the sword piercing his chest with shock as his own blade clattered to the church floor beside him, and Adina staring wide-eyed. Then Raste let out a wheezing groan, and Adina pulled her sword free before he toppled to the ground and lay still.
Adina stood in shock, having a difficult time comprehending the finality of what she’d done. It sometimes took husbands and wives years to conceive a child only for the woman to endure nine difficult months of carrying it before it was finally born. So much time, so much difficulty in creating a life, and she had just ended one in no longer than it took to draw a breath. She looked at her hands and saw that they were shaking.
She knelt, her eyes blurry with tears, and wiped the blood from her blade on the dead man’s shirt. Brandon had told her never to put the sword away unclean, and so she made sure she’d removed all the blood she could before sliding it back into the sheath at her back, her eyes never leaving the dead man before her.
He had been a traitor, but he had also been a man, somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, perhaps. She took a slow, deep breath in a failing effort to gather her composure, then wiped her arm across her eyes before starting for the church door. She paused at the threshold and glanced back at the dead man. Not a man any longer though, for whatever had made him such was gone, and what was left was only an empty shell, devoid of hope or meaning.
Then, her heart aching as if she had been the one pierced with a blade, feeling both terribly cold and impossibly hot at the same time, Adina turned away and opened the church doors, stepping into the street.
Two dozen men in the uniform of the city guard waited for her, crossbows trained on her and Adina froze. She did not scream or cry out in surprise, for she was far too numb to feel something as mundane as that. Instead, she only stared at the guards, at the crossbows in their hands, until two of them stepped to the side and allowed a man to walk through.
He was tall and thin, a dark beard covering what Adina knew was a weak chin, his eyes appearing beady and shifty beneath thick eyebrows. “Princess Adina,” General Ridell said smiling. His hands were clasped behind his back as if he were at some military function instead of preparing to commit murder and treason in the streets of the city he was sworn to protect. “How good it is to see you.”
“Queen Adina to you, worm,” Adina hissed as rage, bright and hot and sudden, engulfed her, and she took a step toward him.
The general held up a finger. “Easy, Princess,” he said, smiling as if he didn’t have a care in the world as he gestured to the two dozen men arrayed in the street. “I do not think you would make it far, do you? And tell me,” he said, peering at the church doors as if he could somehow see through them, “where is Raste?”
“Dead,” Adina said, “by my hand.” There was no satisfaction in the words, no boasting; only a cold truth that she could not deny no matter how much she might have wished to.
The general frowned at that for a moment then finally he shrugged. “Saves us having to give him the reward, then. You really shouldn’t have come back here, you know.”
“Dark times indeed when a queen is not welcome in her own city,” Adina said.
“Not dark for all,” the general said, motioning to the soldiers. “Good bye, Queen.”
Adina closed her eyes, heard the snap of the crossbows’ release and waited for death to claim her. When a moment passed, then another and she still felt no pain she slowly opened her eyes and stared in shock. A small, old woman stood between her and the men, her back to Adina. The old woman heaved in great, gasping breaths. She held several long, slender pieces of wood in both hands at her side, and it took Adina a moment to realize with shock that they were crossbow bolts. The general and the soldiers with him also stared in wide-eyed shock as the woman let the crossbow bolts fall to the ground.
“Impossible,” General Ridell breathed, “that’s impossible.”
“Impossible?” said the old woman in a familiar voice. “Nah, not that. Impossible is the fact that you’re still alive with a heart as black as the one you carry in your chest.” Beth glanced back at Adina and gave her a smile, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t have tried to leave without us, Princess.”
Adina was just about to respond when she hea
rd the sound of footsteps off to her left and looked to see May, Gryle, and Bastion emerging from beside the church and running toward her. “May, I don’t—”
“You didn’t honestly think that we’d let you go alone did you?” the club owner asked, panting for breath. “Gods, Princess, I work with criminals for a living—I know when I’m being lied to. Now, we’ll talk about how foolish you’ve been later, if we survive this. For now, let’s get into the church before those boys get their crossbows reloaded.”
Adina felt stunned, but she let the red-haired woman lead her to the door. Gryle and Bastion were close behind, but Beth was still standing and watching the men even as they reloaded their crossbows. “What about Beth?” Adina asked.
“Never mind her,” May said, pushing Adina toward the door, “get inside.”
The moment they were inside, Gryle and Bastion were closing the doors, and she thought that they meant to leave the old woman outside with the soldiers, but there was a blur of movement and a pop in the air, and the next thing she knew Beth was beside her. The old woman collapsed on a pew with her elbows on her knees, gasping for air. “Close it!” May yelled, and the two men slammed the doors shut.
No sooner had they closed them than there was a rapid thump, thump, thump as crossbow bolts embedded themselves in the wood of the door, several sticking through only inches from Bastion and Gryle. Adina turned to the club owner, “May, I’m sorry I left. I thought—”
“I know well and good what you thought,” the club owner said, “and I know the reasons you’d give for doing what you did. It was foolish, and I’ll lecture you on it later, but right now we’ve got more pressing concerns.” She cast her eyes around the dim church. “Is there a back door out of this place?”
Adina’s heart was still racing from the last few minutes, her mind trying to catch up with her unexpected salvation. “I…I don’t—”
“Mistress!” Gryle ran clumsily toward her, examining her as if he expected a crossbow bolt to be sticking out of her somewhere. “Are you alright?”
“I’m okay, Gryle,” she said, giving the man a small smile, “For now. But…but I think I’ve been a fool.”
May snorted at that, but Gryle stepped forward, studying the princess’s clothes. “I’m so sorry, Princess, but I think the shirt is ruined. There’s…is that blood? Are you bleeding?”
“It’s not mine, Gryle,” Adina said, waving away the man’s attentions. She indicated Raste’s corpse a little way further into the church. “It’s his.”
The chamberlain stared with wide eyes at the dead man, his face turning a slight shade of green as he took in the blood pooling around him. “This, Princess,” he said in a prim, disapproving voice, “is why it is important that a lady of your station have a chaperone.”
Adina found herself laughing unexpectedly at that, but soon her laughing devolved into tears at what she’d done, at what she’d dragged her friends into, and she was shocked when Gryle stepped forward and embraced her in a hug. Suddenly feeling wrung out and weak, Adina buried her head in the man’s shoulder and cried. “It’s alright, Princess,” he said in the soft, soothing voice one might use with a child or a frightened animal.
“I’ve been a fool, Gryle,” she said, “and you’re all going to die for my failure.”
“It is not our failures that define us, Princess,” the chamberlain said, “but what we do after that matters. Your father told me that once.”
Adina stepped back, looking up at the man’s eyes, seeing the compassion and understanding there. “Oh, Gryle,” she said, “what would I do without you?”
The chamberlain smiled and despite the men outside the church, men looking to kill them all, the expression was so genuine, so true, that Adina found herself smiling with him, “Well,” he said, “it is a chamberlain’s duty to see to his mistress’s needs, Princess.”
“You are not my chamberlain, Gryle,” Adina said. “You’re my friend.”
He smiled widely at that, his eyes twinkling. “Thank you, Pr—”
“Gryle, I need you!”
They both looked to see the giant soldier, Bastion, with his hands pressed against the door, the muscles of his back and arms straining. Even as they watched, the door bucked inward, and he was pushed back a step before resetting his feet, growling with the effort.
“I’ll be right back, Princess,” Gryle promised, and then he hesitated, grabbing her shirt sleeve and examining the blood stains, shaking his head sadly. “As soon as we’re out of here, we’ll see what we can do about those clothes.”
“Gryle!” Bastion bellowed, and the chamberlain let out a squeak as he hurried toward the door.
“Beth?” Adina said, moving to crouch beside the old woman. “Are you alright?”
“I’m…fine,” the woman panted, “just…tired is all. You might…not think it. But catching a…few dozen crossbow bolts in flight is…a little draining.”
“You saved my life,” Adina said, putting her hand on one of the woman’s own, “thank you. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” the woman said, pausing to swallow, “you can…find us a way out of here. I’d rather…not die in a church. Feels sacrilegious.”
Adina nodded and rose, moving to May. “Sometimes churches will have a separate door behind the altar for the priest’s quarters and for them to enter and exit without disturbing the parishioners.”
“And does this one have such a door?” the club owner asked, hopeful.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Adina said, hurrying toward the door she’d seen behind the altar when Raste had attacked her, and throwing it open. Inside was a small hallway which she followed to the priest’s quarters. In some of the churches dedicated to the younger gods, the priest’s quarters were so opulent as to almost belong in some noble’s manse or castle, but here the accoutrements were austere and simple. Several plain beds sat within a small room along with a separate altar for the priests to take devotion with their god. Adina went around the room searching for a door, her heart hammering in her chest as she listened to the soldiers trying to batter their way into the church.
“Anything?”
Adina turned to see that the club owner had followed her inside and now stood in the doorway. Hurriedly, Adina went around the outside of the room once more, checking behind the altar and the beds, searching for any sign of some hidden door then she cursed, turning back to May. “There’s no door. This church must have been built before they started adding them.”
May opened her mouth to respond but suddenly there was a deafening crash, and both women’s eyes went wide. Adina rushed out into the church, expecting to find the great doors collapsed inside. And sure enough the doors were broken down, but Adina realized with surprise that they had broken outward, not inward, and she could just make out several pairs of legs sticking out from underneath the thick oak doors.
“What happened?”
Bastion stared slack-jawed at Gryle. For his part, the chamberlain was staring at the floor and rubbing his hands together, clearly embarrassed. “I…that is…I didn’t mean to. I had only meant to hold it, but I must have pushed too hard and—”
“Gryle, watch out!” May shouted, and Adina looked up to see two of the soldiers rushing the doorway, swords in their hands.
Bastion drew his own sword, but Gryle let out a squeak of fear, picking up one of the long, solid oak pews that sat nearby as if it weighed nothing. He stepped outside the opening and swung it at the approaching men. Adina had enough time to see the shock on the two soldiers’ faces before the pew struck them, and they went soaring through the air as if they’d been hurled from a catapult, screaming as they flew into the distance. Then, there was crash from far away, followed by a stunned silence as everyone, friend and foe alike, stared at the chamberlain. “Sorry,” Gryle called after the two men.
Beth was the first to recover, and the old woman let out a weary cackle as she used the pew to lever herself to her feet. “Those eggs are cr
acked and no mistake,” she said, grinning as she took several steps toward the door before turning back to May and Adina. “Well? You all comin’ or are you just gonna sit there with your mouths hangin’ open, see if maybe you can’t catch a bug?”
“Right,” Adina managed, swallowing hard, “let’s go.”
She and the others rushed outside to stand beside the chamberlain who was holding the church pew over one shoulder as if it was a club. If hefting it strained him, he gave no sign. Adina drew her sword, along with Bastion, and May produced two knives, though from where Adina couldn’t have guessed. Beth only stood, staring at the soldiers across the street as if they were wayward grandchildren who needed to be punished.
The general and what remained of his soldiers stared wide-eyed at the troops that had been crushed beneath the door, and at the chamberlain himself, still holding the pew. “This…this is impossible,” Ridell breathed. “You’re…you’re monsters.”
“No, Ridell,” Adina said, shaking her head, “we are not the monsters. The monsters are men like you who care only for their own ambitions and nothing about the lives they leave broken and shattered in their wake. Monsters who would throw away the lives of their soldiers,” she said, motioning to the men with him, “only to satisfy their own lust for power.”
The general sneered at that. “Oh, it is rich for you to talk of monsters while you and your royal siblings have killed thousands with your years of warring for who gets to sit on a throne.”
The man’s words stabbed Adina sharper than any blade might have. The man was right. The people had suffered because of her and her siblings’ war against Belgarin. How many wives left without husbands? How many children without fathers?
“Don’t be any dumber than you have to be, General,” May said from beside Adina. “A man—or a woman—must fight evil where he finds it and what losses result are not to be laid at such a man or woman’s feet, but at the feet of the evil itself. It is those like you who create such evil while Princess Adina and those like her do what they can to stop it.”
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