by C. S. Pacat
‘They’re already here,’ said Violet in a tense voice.
Will said, ‘It’s only one horse.’
His heart was pounding. They tied their own horses to the trunk of a birch out of sight and crept forward cautiously.
The farmhouse was a large building of grey stone, the approach a deserted tangle of brambles and high grass. The faded farm sign said Paquet, and the nearest glass windowpane was broken, like a jagged black tooth. The door swung open soundlessly.
The cracked basin of the abandoned kitchen inside was covered in leaves and dirt, as if a season’s detritus had blown in from outside. There were no signs of food or supplies. But in one corner, there was a pitiful bundle of twigs, gathered recently enough that they had not been scattered by the wind. Will pointed to it, and Violet and Cyprian silently drew their swords.
The place was too quiet. As they lifted the catch to the hallway, a wood pigeon flew up and out of a hole in the ceiling, and they all froze for long moments. Through the first door on the left, Will saw a small, bare room with a half-missing glass window. Empty. Through the second he saw a stained pallet, spilling straw—
—a dead girl lay on the pallet, her eyes staring upward. Someone had thrown a wrinkled coverlet over her body. Cyprian went still at the sight of her, newly dead, the coverlet recent. There were footsteps in the dust.
Will barely had time to react before a sound at the end of the hall jerked his attention forward.
Whoever was here was through that door.
He thought of the horse outside. The high black gloss of its coat. He turned to the others – Cyprian’s pinched face, Violet’s hands tight on her sword – and they moved forward slowly, quietly, towards the sound, until they reached the end of the hall.
He saw everything all at once. The half-open doorway. A decrepit room with litter scattered over the floor, and rotted boarding showing through the broken plaster walls. An old man in a chair, with filmy blind eyes. Will’s hand shot out to keep the others back.
Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.
Through the doorway, strolling in elegantly over the trash, was James.
He had clearly spent the night in good lodgings. Perhaps he had returned to Simon after escaping the Hall, or perhaps he had taken rooms nearby. His torn, bloodstained shirt had been replaced by fresh linen and an elegant riding jacket along with the kind of shiny boots that a rider might tap their whip against.
James wasn’t making any effort to be quiet. He toured the room, his eyes passing over all the signs of decay before returning to the old man. Sunken in his chair with blankets over his lap, he had a grey, shrivelled look, like he was part of the decaying house. His head had lifted jerkily towards James at the first sound, seeming confused that someone was with him. ‘Sophie?’
‘It’s not Sophie,’ said James, with a thin smile the man couldn’t see. ‘Sophie’s dead.’
The girl on the pallet. Had she been a servant? She had worn the clothing of a girl used to hard work on a farm. The old man stared at James blindly.
‘Who are you?’ he said, clutching the blanket in his lap to himself. ‘What are you doing in my house?’
He looked frightened. He didn’t seem to know what was happening. He didn’t even seem to have a firm grasp of where James was standing, his eyes staring past him.
‘You know, I thought I’d recognise you,’ James remarked, as if the old man hadn’t spoken. ‘But I don’t. You’re just a blind, pathetic old man.’
The old man kept turning his head to follow the sounds of James as he moved around the room, as if trying to locate him. ‘If you’re here to rob me, you’re too late. I don’t have anything.’
‘That’s not quite true, is it, Gauthier,’ said James, and there was a moment when the old man’s face changed, in terrible new recognition.
‘Who are you?’ said Gauthier. ‘How do you know my name?’
He was breathing shallowly. James ignored him and continued to stroll the room, lifting a scattering of papers, pulling a rotted piece of wood from the wall. His boot heel crunched on a broken shard of porcelain.
‘Where is it?’ said James, and Will felt his heart rate spike. They were closing in on why they had come.
Gauthier’s hands tightened on the blankets. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Will looked over at Violet and Cyprian, who realised it too. They were speaking of the object that they had come here to find. The object Simon wanted, that he’d sent James here to get.
‘Where is it?’ James repeated. He had stopped at the old mantelpiece, resting a shoulder against it as he coolly looked back at Gauthier, whose hands quivered.
‘It was stolen. Years ago. I was glad to see it go. I wish I’d thrown it away myself.’
This time a silence stretched out after the answer, stretched to a breaking point as the quiver increased.
‘Where is it?’ said James, in the same voice, but it felt different.
‘Do you think I’d keep that wretched thing! With its accursed lure bringing the wolves to my door!’
Will saw it before James, the way that Gauthier’s hands were gripped to the blanket, and the strange lumpen shape underneath. He has it. Whatever it was, this prize – he had kept it, holding it close to himself, clutched to his body as his house rotted around him and his people died.
‘I know you’ve kept it,’ said James. ‘Everyone keeps it. Everyone wants what it can do.’
Then Gauthier said, as if learning a great truth, ‘The Betrayer!’
James looked like he’d been slapped. ‘Why do you know that name?’
‘It knows you.’ Gauthier started laughing, a terrible sound on the edge of madness. ‘Have you come to get it for your master?’ James’s face turned white. ‘Do you want it? Do you want it the way it wants you?’
‘I knew you’d keep it with you!’ James spat the words out venomously. ‘You knew Simon was coming for it … You could have gotten rid of it. You could have destroyed it. Why didn’t you?’
‘You don’t know your master if you think it can be destroyed.’ Gauthier’s voice took on a dreamlike quality. ‘It’s the last thing my eyes remember. The look of it. The ruby and the gold. It’s perfect. It can’t be broken. It can’t be melted down. It’s waiting. For you.’ Those sightless eyes turned to James, and Gauthier’s face split in a smile. ‘You don’t want it to be destroyed. You want it. You want it on you.’
James snapped at those words, his invisible power slamming Gauthier and his chair violently backward with a crackle of air. Sprawled on the ground, Gauthier began laughing again. ‘There you are – you want me to put it on you—?’
It was their only possible chance – James’s eyes, his whole attention was on Gauthier furiously. Now, Will signalled to Violet and Cyprian. And in the single moment that James was vulnerable, the three of them attacked.
It had worked before. In London they had used Will as bait, while Violet attacked James from behind. And before that, Will had disrupted James’s power on the docks by crashing a crate down on top of him, the very first time they’d seen each other.
Now James’s head whipped around so fast that he glimpsed Violet’s explosive movements at the first sound – throwing out his hand. As if a great invisible force gripped her, she was thrown violently upward, hitting the ceiling with a cry of pain, then slamming back down again in a burst of fine plaster.
Hand still outstretched towards Violet, a single glittering look sent Cyprian flying backward across the room to hit the wall with a sick smash, blood coming from his nose and mouth. Pinned like a butterfly, Cyprian stuck there, halfway up the wall and unable to move.
And then those blue eyes were on Will.
Will had barely had time to pull the manacles out of his pack before he was yanked down to his knees and held there, his head forced to the ground and subjected to a crushing pressure, as if it were being stepped on by a shiny boot. He made a furious sound, unable to do anything but hold in p
lace.
James barely looked ruffled. Dispatching the three of them had taken a scant few seconds. Will could taste the static in the air, the power around James crackling like the vengeance of a young god, even as he made it look effortless. He might just as easily have brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve, except for the killing look in his eyes.
The Dark King’s most ruthless lieutenant. James strolled forward like a destroyer of worlds, and Will saw how utterly they had underestimated his power. In the old world he had ridden at the front of dark armies. In this one he had decimated a squadron of Stewards, lifting them out of the saddles and snapping their necks with his mind.
Now his attention fixed on Will.
Behind James, on the ground, Gauthier was trying to get away. Dragging himself from the chair with his arms made the thin blanket on his lap slip. Gauthier let out a cry as something spilled from the blanket to the floor and rolled, and for a moment, Will saw a curving flash of rubies and gold.
James turned helplessly towards it – and as he saw it, his eyes dilated, growing huge with pupil, and his whole body swayed towards the object.
Feeling the hold on him loosen, Will lifted his head. At the same moment, Cyprian slid down the wall with a thud, and Violet pushed herself up onto all fours.
James blinked, shaking his head as if to clear it. He tried to reassert control. Violet was thrown back again, though this time James looked unsteady. Breathing shallowly, James gestured and the room’s huge, rotting oak table slammed into Cyprian, crushing him against the opposite wall.
Or it was meant to.
Cyprian had never drunk from the Cup, and he didn’t have Violet’s strength, but he had always been the best of the novitiates. Even injured, he had a perfectly trained grace and an astonishing athleticism. He vaulted the table the way a Steward might have, landing and rolling to hit James low, knocking his legs out from under him. Cyprian started choking a second later, but James still looked half-dazed. He had barely begun to constrict Cyprian’s throat with his power before Violet was on him, delivering a blow that allowed Will to snap a manacle closed on his wrist.
The static air of magic in the room went out. Cyprian drew in a shuddering breath. On the ground underneath the restraining hands of Will and Violet, James was panting, his eyes hugely dilated, black with pupil.
They had him. They had him. Victory surged in Will’s blood. James was satisfyingly roughed up, his jacket off, his shirt torn, and his hair falling from its part into his face, blood on his lip from Violet’s punch. Violet and Cyprian both were bloodied, but the manacles were on James’s wrists now and Violet was holding him down.
The room was a wreck. The table had splintered, the floor was rained with burst plaster, and Gauthier’s chair was overturned. Gauthier was sprawled on the ground, and his fingers groped frantically in the grime, wormlike, for the curved circle of ruby and gold that had rolled away from him to lie a few steps out of his reach.
Will rose. Gauthier made a desperate sound at his footsteps.
‘We’re not your enemy,’ Will said. ‘We’re here to help you.’
‘You’re not here to help me. You’re here for it.’
It. Will could see it. A thick circle of rubies, set in gold. Too large for a bracelet. Too small for a crown.
‘For the Collar,’ said Gauthier.
Collar. That was the word for it, Will thought. It was made to close around a throat. Gauthier let out a low moan, as if he somehow knew Will was bending down to pick it up. Will looked up and saw the grasping way Gauthier was reaching out for it. At the last moment, he snatched up the blanket and used it to bundle the Collar up rather than holding it in his bare hands.
‘No—’ said James, struggling against Violet as Will turned back to him.
It was heavy. A choker. The gold of its rim was high enough to force a chin up. Set with rubies, it gleamed redly, like blood welling from a gash. Like the manacles, it opened on a hinge. Two semicircles of rubies and gold that swung open and would close with a snap on the right throat.
‘Don’t worry. I told you. We’re not going to let James take it,’ said Will.
The old man began to laugh. ‘You don’t know what it does!’
Will looked over at him. ‘Simon wants it. It will make him powerful—’
Gauthier laughed his mad laugh. ‘Aye. That’s true enough. It would make Simon the most powerful man alive.’
Will couldn’t help looking back at it, the deep red glint of the rubies and the gleaming curve of the gold. He felt the same pull from it that he had felt from the Cup. No, it was stronger, like a whisper in his ear, over his skin, in his blood. Take me. Use me. Do it.
‘What does it do?’ His fingers reached out to skim the edge of it, a desire to touch it, to feel it warm under his hands.
‘It controls the Betrayer.’
‘What?’ said Will. His fingers jerked back from it. He was staring at Gauthier.
‘You put that around his neck and he’ll obey you utterly.’ The words started a strange rushing in Will’s head. ‘The Betrayer! The only Reborn in the human world! He’s just a boy now, but when he’s fully grown? To command all that power?’
James was on his knees with his hands manacled behind his back. His split lip had already begun to heal, its only trace a smudge of red. Violet had a fist in his hair, holding his head up. Cyprian had a sword to his throat.
‘He’s lying,’ James ground out, but Will knew he wasn’t, could feel it. There was fear somewhere deep in James’s eyes. Will remembered the way James’s pupils had dilated when the Collar had been exposed. The way his whole body had swayed towards it. It was made for him; designed for his throat; red as his blood; gold as his hair; a perfect fit. And it wanted him. Ached for him.
A study in sadistic opulence, its bejewelled circlet turned even the idea of James into a possession. Simon’s Prize. Will shivered as he saw that the Collar had a gold link set at the back.
‘It pleased the Dark King to take the Light’s greatest fighter and turn him into a lapdog,’ said Gauthier. ‘His people never knew he was ensorcelled, only that he’d become the Dark’s lieutenant. They called him Anharion, the Betrayer. He kissed the Dark King’s lips, rode at the Dark King’s side, and slaughtered his own kind. They thought he did it of his own free will.’
‘You mean he didn’t choose to serve the Dark King?’ Will’s heart was pounding strangely. ‘He was forced to do it? Under some kind of spell?’
Will’s eyes swung to James in shock, and for a moment James was utterly exposed by the truth, his blue eyes wide and vulnerable, and in that single look Will could glimpse the pure youth he might have been, before the Dark King had warped and twisted him.
‘That is the power of the Collar! It takes the will of the Betrayer and replaces it with your own. Put it on him and you can make him yours … you can make him do anything. That’s how Sarcean kept him as a plaything in his bed at night, and by day sent him out to kill his own people.’
‘Please,’ said James. ‘Don’t give it to my father.’
The words seemed forced out of his throat. He looked stripped down to the bone, like a man taken apart, with nothing left. He was soaked with sweat, his damp hair falling into his face, his shirt wet.
‘Your father’s dead,’ said Will.
There was a flash of incomprehension on James’s face. ‘What?’
‘You didn’t know?’ Cyprian said bitterly. It was as if the spell of Gauthier’s words was broken, the smaller hurts of their own history intruding. ‘Did you think he escaped when the shadow came?’
‘The shadow?’ said James, and then, eyes widening, ‘Marcus turned?’
Hearing James say his brother’s name was too much for Cyprian, and he discarded his sword and dragged James to his feet.
‘Betrayer,’ said Cyprian, holding a fistful of James’s shirt. ‘You didn’t need a Collar. You served Simon of your own free will. You know exactly what happened in the Hall. You were there.’ A
nd then, revolted: ‘Did you hear them die? Did you watch? Did it make you happy to kill your own family?’
‘I wasn’t there,’ James returned. ‘Emery let me out.’
Emery? Will thought of the shy, curly-haired novitiate who had been one of the first to be kind to him in the Hall. It seemed so unlikely, Will’s mind couldn’t make sense of it. But when he looked at James for any sign of subterfuge, he found none.
Cyprian’s grip tightened. ‘Why would Emery ever do that?’
‘Because he’s been in love with me since we were eleven. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.’
After a long, violent silence, Cyprian’s face twisted. He released James with a shove, sending him sprawling across the floor. Cyprian stalked off to the mantel and stood gathering himself, his back to them taut with tension, his arm braced on the wall.
‘Well, he’s dead,’ said Cyprian, after a long silence. ‘They’re all dead. Because of you.’
‘Because of me?’ James’s voice taunted him. ‘Because of Marcus. He’s the one who drank from the Cup.’
Cyprian turned. Will saw the knife of James’s smile and stepped hastily between them, remembering James in the Hall of the Stewards, inciting violence with just his words. He had to hold Cyprian bodily back. ‘Stop it. Stop. He wants this. He’s baiting you. Stop.’
Cyprian wrenched away, breathing hard. James was watching with a dangerously provocative expression, even sprawled as he was on his elbows, his hands manacled awkwardly behind him. Cyprian’s shove had pushed James a couple of feet further away from Will and the Collar, which perhaps had been the entire point.
Will turned to Gauthier. ‘You’re saying this Collar has the power to control a person.’
‘Not any person,’ said Gauthier. ‘Only him.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Plenty of fools have tried to put it on others. Some who crave submission have tried to put it on themselves. It doesn’t work. It was made for one person. To close around one throat.’