by Devin Madson
The horses started forward, drawing the wagon from the ditch. It jolted over rocks and tufts of grass before finding the track, and as it swayed, I crossed my arms, resigning myself to an uncomfortable night.
Half of the Vices rode ahead, each a dark shape in the shredded moonlight. We might have been a cavalcade of shadows—black riders on black horses—but for the bright colours of Malice’s wagon.
Unsure where we were heading, I watched the road and looked for moonlit landmarks, but soon we wound into a clump of trees that became a forest, its broad canopy stealing all but a few shreds of moonlight. I closed my eyes and let my Sight wander. Nearby, a village of eighty-seven souls came and went without a sound.
One wheel juddered into a pothole and Avarice swore. The back wheel followed with a jolt, but we kept moving, the oak trees pressing ever closer until I could barely see the silken tail of the horse ahead. With no light, our pace slackened to a walk.
“Ask the Master for the lanterns,” Avarice growled as the wagon lurched again. “Or we’re going to break a wheel.”
Hope rose, holding tight to the doorframe as he lifted the latch. Light spilled out, sluggish as treacle, the smell of opium sweet on the air. Acorns cracked beneath the wheels. Another jolt almost sent me head first onto the road.
A few minutes later, Hope returned with half a dozen lit lanterns hanging from his fingers.
“What kept you?” Avarice snapped.
“The Master.”
“But he gave permission?”
“In his way.” Hope stretched up to hang a lantern on the wagon’s spar. “He’s not all there.”
With the procession moving so slowly, Hope dropped onto the track and jogged ahead. Two lanterns went to the Vices in the lead, while a third he hung on the crossbar, revealing potholes in the road. The last two he gave to Vices behind us, before gripping the slow-moving running board and hauling himself back onto the wagon.
Avarice had relaxed, but the erratic lantern light threw strange shadows. It turned the young oak leaves into golden hands, their grasping branches smothering a woodcutter’s shack set back from the road. There, two souls lay fast asleep.
They slid away as we continued on.
“Why are you still travelling with us?” Hope said abruptly as he settled back in front of the doorway.
Avarice hissed in warning.
“No, Av, I want to know. He isn’t marked, so he must have a reason.”
Because I don’t know where else to go. Because Darius and Malice are the only people who understand me.
“Must I have one?” I said. “Is there anything wrong with just enjoying your company?”
One new soul emerged from the night ahead. No, four. Six.
“That’s rich,” Avarice said with one of his rare laughs. “Because we’re such a cheery bunch.”
“Oh, not your company, Avarice, but Hope is nice and Ire always makes me laugh—”
“Qualities you could never find anywhere else.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to flick Hope a pitying look. “You hear that? You’re nice.”
Hope sniffed. “Better than being a cranky old mule,” he said, though mortification hung in a fug around him and he did not look my way.
“Mule? At least where I’m from, our mules aren’t the sorry beasts we have here. Better than these horses some of them.”
Seven souls. Nine. Twelve.
“Where are you from?” I asked, but Avarice seemed to have thought better of reminiscing, for his usual glower was on the air—Avarice able to make expressions felt even if they couldn’t be seen. I directed my questioning gaze at Hope, curiosity piqued. “Do you know where he’s from?”
“No. Across the Eye Sea somewhere I’ve always thought, but it must have been a long time ago, because his Kisian is flawless.”
“Why thank you,” Avarice grumbled. “A bow to you both.”
Still wedged into his place in the doorframe, Hope grinned. His smile was as rare as Avarice’s but far more infectious. I grinned back.
Fifteen souls. Sixteen.
“Why are you even called Avarice?” I said.
“Because I stole silver.”
“From who?”
“Master Darius.”
“So it has nothing to do with your skill? What is it that you do?”
Twenty-four. Forty.
Avarice did not answer. In the doorway, Hope shifted position. “Some of us don’t like that question,” he said. “It’s personal. Some of us have random abilities, others were… deliberate creations.”
“You heal people.”
Avarice snorted, and Hope lifted his brows, his face glistening in the light. The heat had covered us all in a sheen of sweat. “Do I?”
“Don’t you?”
“I will say yes,” he said with one of his sad smiles. “But only because it’s a nice lie.”
Fifty-two. It must have been another village, although they were coming to my Sight in dribs and drabs rather than all together like the last village had.
I wanted to ask Hope what he meant. Wanted to ask what he had been doing to Kimiko and Darius if not healing them, but when I turned to ask, tears stood in his eyes. My stomach flip-flopped and I looked away. “What was Darius like as a child?” I asked Avarice instead, desperate to change the conversation.
Avarice didn’t turn around. “Master Darius was Master Darius.”
“That isn’t a good answer.”
“It wasn’t a good question.”
I stared at him, though it was Hope’s pain that called to me. “Did you look after him when his mother died?”
Avarice scowled at the road.
“How did she die?”
“In childbirth.”
“With Darius?”
He turned the scowl on me. “No, he was easy born. Lady Laroth always said he wanted to come into the world. His sister was not so keen.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died,” he said, the short, sharp words of someone trying to end a conversation.
“How?”
One hundred and four souls. Yet there was no sound above the grind of the wheels and the desultory crunch of hooves upon the road. The night was growing quiet.
“You ask a lot of questions,” Avarice said.
“I have a lot of ignorance.”
“Knowledge won’t fix that.”
“What do you mean?”
Avarice shrugged one large shoulder and spoke like a man reciting from a page. “‘Knowledge is nothing but the absence of comprehension.’”
One hundred and fifty-one. The night stilled.
“Did Master Darius say that?”
An arrow pierced the golden aura of our lanterns and buried itself, juddering, in the side of the wagon. Shouts rent the night. A horse squealed. Ahead, Apostasy reached for his sickle, controlling his skittering horse with a single hand on the reins. The weapon came free from his belt, the thin hooks along its outer edge crying out for flesh. Perhaps he saw the flicker of a red fletching, for he looked up and the arrowhead pierced his eye, throwing him from the saddle.
Hope scrabbled at the door. “Master!” he cried, trying to grip the latch in a shaking hand. “We’re under attack!”
Pain chipped at my body, all cuts and torn flesh and gaping throats gasping air.
An arrow clipped a wheeler’s nose, and the horse backed with a squeal, almost tipping the wagon off the track. The others panicked, but Avarice held them steady even as an arrow flew for his neck. A wave of pain poured into the night, and the projectile glanced off skin turned grey and mottled like blood-soaked stone.
Avarice didn’t flinch.
“Master!”
Shadowy figures moved between the trees. A man stepped into the light, dodging the swing of a sickle, but its sharp hooks ripped his flesh. Blood spattered the Vice’s face and the man howled.
Bodies already covered the road. Another fell screaming from the trees, hitting the ground with a crack o
f bone, his neck twisted and pale ooze leaking from his head. In his hand a broken bow, and around his waist a black sash.
Katashi’s men.
“How many are there?” Malice was beside me, curls of smoke caught to his hair. “Don’t just stare at me,” he snarled. “My men are dying. How many are there?”
“One hundred and eleven still alive.” I gasped. A scream ended in a gurgle as flesh tore. “One hundred and ten.”
Perched on the running board, Hope nocked an arrow to his bow as more Pikes rushed from the trees. Let loose, the arrow found its mark, slamming into the chest of an oncoming solider.
“One hundred and nine.”
Malice gripped the front of my robe, pulling me so close I could taste the opium on his breath. “Kill them,” he hissed and took my hand. It was easy to push through his barriers, to hear the fearful whisper of his thoughts, but it was not enough. The drug had dulled his hatred, dulled his anger.
“I can’t,” I said. “Your emotions aren’t strong enough.”
Malice stared at me, no words, no orders left upon his tongue.
Pikes swarmed the road. A curved blade swung inches from Hope’s thigh, throwing him off balance. He hit the running board, bow skidding away onto the road.
A man launched himself at the wagon, his blade slicing into Avarice’s arm. The old Vice hissed and his skin mottled, hardening around the metal. The Pike yanked on the hilt but it would not budge, and he fell back, slamming into the running board. Hope caught him, gripping the Pike’s face between his hands. The soldier’s eyes widened. From fear to horror. Desolation. It sucked flesh from his bones and hollowed his cheeks.
The man jerked out of the Hope’s hands, tears streaming, and with great wracking sobs, he cried as though his heart was breaking before thrusting his knife into his own gut.
Hope retched.
“Kill them, Endymion,” Malice ordered. “Now! Use Hope.”
But I couldn’t pull my eyes from the solider. He knelt, skewered on his own blade, a faint smile tracing bloodied lips.
“What about your Vices?”
“They have thick skins. Do it.”
Two steps to Hope’s side, and all it took was a touch. I cupped my hand to his cheek, the same caress with which he had destroyed everything that man had lived for.
One hundred and four enemies and without moving, I could reach them all. Letting go a slow breath, I spread the despair that filled Hope’s soul, turning the air to poison. The sounds of battle slowed. Steps faltered. Men gasped. Then building from low moans, the despair grew. The Pikes on the road fell to their knees, tore at their hair, keening, crying, shredding their souls. Vices pressed hands to their ears, but the hopelessness seeped through their skin, every pore breathing the despair deep, and they too buckled.
One by one, the Pikes still in the trees began to leap. Heads smashed into the wagon roof. Others hit the stones or landed on their comrades, spilling blood and brains. Everywhere, they turned their weapons on themselves, but I could not pull my hand from Hope’s cheek, could only stare at the growing carnage. Until the last Pike stood upon the blanket of broken flesh, of twisted limbs and bloody throats and, looking up at the sky, pressed his blade through his own neck.
Hope wrenched away and vomited over the edge of the wagon with a wet splatter. It stuck in his hair and he trembled, gilded tears running fast.
Not all the Pikes were dead. Some were bleeding out slowly from wounds in arms and legs and guts, but there were no cries of pain, no howls of grief. They lay still, barely twitching, the night full of gentle, warm satisfaction.
I flinched at Malice’s touch on my shoulder. He spoke. Perhaps he thanked me, or shouted or told me I was a monster. I couldn’t tell because Hope was still retching over the side of the wagon. That hopelessness, all of it, was what lived inside him every moment of every day.
My gaze shied back to the dead Pikes on the road, staring toward the heavens with sightless eyes.
One hundred and fifty-nine dead men. Horses spilling their guts onto the track. Down the hillside, two frightened souls huddled in a woodcutter’s cabin. Eighty-seven souls in the village we had passed. And from its vast distances, Kisia spoke to me.
That’s wrong. That shouldn’t be possible.
Shit, this hurts.
The screaming has stopped. Should we go see what happened? What if someone needed help and we just hid here and did nothing?
The gods will judge.
They will judge.
They will.
They must.
Chapter 7
Hana
It felt no different waking as Her Grace of Koi, but as I lay watching the first hints of dawn creep across the matting, I thought of all the things it changed and smiled to myself.
If I was to ride out with the army the next day there was much to organise—my own entourage and supplies, armour and tent and horse and weapons and all the many other things that would no doubt come to mind. Yet, before any of that, I needed to see Darius.
I sat up, and owning the acute hearing of a serving maid, Tili opened the door from her adjoining room and came in. She had her long hair caught back in its customary bun, and she smiled, but there were dark rings beneath her eyes.
“Good morning, my lady,” she said. “I hope you were not woken last night.”
“No? Should I have been?”
She set back the lid of a chest and removed a dressing robe, a single layer of thin tan linen, close around the throat. “I hoped not, but His Majesty insisted on looking in on you, in case Lord Laroth should have been here.”
“Katashi came back last night?”
“I refused to let any of the guards enter, my lady,” she said, shaking out the dressing robe with a snap. “I could not, however, stop His Majesty from doing whatever he wished. He looked in not long before sunrise, my lady.”
“Looking for Darius? Did he escape?”
I could not hide the hope in my tone, but Tili did not acknowledge it. “It appears so, my lady. Along with the Hian Crown.”
“The—” I pressed my hand to my lips. I had thought it likely Malice would not let Darius go to the headsman, but that he would steal the crown on the way out I had not considered. Darius was loyal to Kin, but Malice was loyal to no one. He would only play such a trick for mischief, or to keep Darius happy.
“Well,” I said, at last finding my voice again. “I will dress. There is a lot to do today, but I think I had better see His Majesty first.”
Fear flashed across Tili’s face, but she made no attempt to turn me from my purpose and accepted without question that we would be packing that day to travel with the army.
By the time I was dressed, the whole castle seemed to be awake. Servants and guards were hurrying through the passages, and from many rooms away, I could hear Katashi’s rage.
As I approached his door, Shin came striding out, more alive than he had been the day before but no less bruised. It looked like he had chosen a poor day to leave the infirmary.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he said in his usual low growl. “It’s been a morning of bad news. We’ll have to replace all the ornaments. He’s always liked breaking things.”
“Worse news than the crown going missing?”
“Kin’s officially denounced him as a traitor to the throne and is threatening all our supporters with everything from fines to disinheritance and execution, depending on their level of involvement. Rumour says he’s already marching his army north.”
Something smashed in the room behind him, a hundred tiny shards raining onto the matting floor. Katashi had stopped shouting, but the silence was hardly an improvement.
“I’ll take my chances,” I said. A nod and a bow and Shin strode past me, leaving behind a waft of soured herbs.
Having been in earshot of our conversation, the Pike standing guard outside Katashi’s rooms did not seek to discourage me from entering, merely grimaced as he slid open the door.
&
nbsp; “Lady Hana is here to see you, Your Majesty,” he said. I didn’t wait for an invitation to enter, afraid to linger lest my courage fail.
Katashi was standing at one end of a grand room with Hacho in his hands. As the door closed behind me, he loosed an arrow at the wall, piercing a vase and sending its contents and its ceramic raining onto the ground.
“No sign of the crown then?”
“No,” he growled and nocked a fresh arrow. With swift skill, he sent it through the painted eye of an unknown man, the paper screen breaking with a loud snap.
I clasped my hands demurely in front of me. “Do excuse me, Your Majesty,” I said. “But as this is my castle now, I would prefer if you did not destroy the few pretty things it possesses.”
He had nocked another arrow, and I felt sure he would ignore me and loose it, but he dropped the point and glared at me over his shoulder. Then he laughed. “How stern you look,” he said, letting the arrow fall from his string as he came toward me. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I am a great beast when I’m enraged. But by the gods, I do not think I can take more bad news today.”
“Shin told me about the message from Mei’lian,” I said. “Was it really so unexpected? Putting pressure on your allies is the first thing I would have done had I been Kin.”
“And what would be the second thing?”
I caught the grim note and looked up into a face that no longer laughed. “You still think I know something of his plans?”
“No. Not really.” He began to pace, and I buried a stab of hurt at his lingering suspicion. “But I have been building to this for years, Hana, making alliances, forming plans, chipping away at Kin’s precious stability. It might have taken me another year to reach this point without the Vices, but if I had waited, they wouldn’t be causing me such grief now. Never trust someone else to do a job you ought to be doing, nor someone you know deep down cannot be trusted.”
Katashi set Hacho down. “On the other hand, if I had not made a deal with him, perhaps I would not have met you. Or might never have found myself able to take the throne at all.” Taking my hand, he kissed the back of my fingers, but though the touch of his lips to my skin sent a little dance of joy through me, it seemed little more than a perfunctory motion to him, and he let my hand go as quickly as he had grasped it.