The Broken Realm

by Sarah M. Cradit

  “Are you not listening? Have you lost all sense? We cannot! Not until I am carrying an heir, until the danger of it being anyone but his...”

  The man silenced her with a kiss once more, this one deeper, more demanding. “My kind cannot have children, Decima.”

  She rose to meet him, her gown sweeping her hair, the floor, him. “Is this true? Or another beautiful lie?”

  “Does it matter? If you believe it?”

  “Should I? Believe it?”

  The man lifted Decima in his arms, this time kissing her with such insisting desire she melted into the moment, folding herself around him, lost to whatever unspoken offer lingered between them now, before, and ever after.

  “Just this once,” she whispered as they fell back upon the fur covering her bed. “Never again.”

  “Once is all I ask,” he answered.

  * * *

  Jesse opened his eyes, as if from a long sleep. He recognized the room, and the woman, Decima, but now she was abed with child, howling the pain of her birth into a sea of men with stone faces. One of them was the man from before, who had promised her he could not produce a child. He glowered in the corner, blending into the scenery. Was this his doing?

  The high piercing curdle of a newborn taking its first breath filled the chambers, dulling Decima’s cries. She reached for the infant, but it was placed in the arms of another man, this one with hair as flaming red as hers. He ignored her pleas and held the child aloft, a prize. His heir, he said, and they all took turns congratulating him, the effort solely his. Together, they departed with the infant, Decima’s cries drowned out by the din of their raucous excitement for the man who at last had his heir.

  The other one stayed behind. The one from before. He emerged from the shadows.

  “You promised me,” she accused, eyes rolling back in her head. “You promised me this could never happen.”

  “You think the child is not his?”

  “Did you lay eyes upon him? His hair is dark, like yours. Will his eyes be green, too? Will he have your magic?”

  “There are Rhiagains who are not red in hair.”

  “Even now, you would lie to me.”

  “You are dying,” he said. “Now is not the time for quarrel.”

  “Dying?” Decima laughed.

  “It is not your fault. Even a queen is not immune to the brutality of bringing a child.” The man knelt at her bedside. He peeled back the blanket, revealing a bedful of dark red blood. “You see? The king, these men, they no longer need you. The midwife saw this and followed them anyway. They would leave you to die.”

  Decima turned her head to hide the tears. “I would like to die.”

  The man laid hands upon her belly and closed his eyes. “But your work here is not yet done.” He swallowed down a wave of emotion. “And I would like you to live.”

  “You are a fool, Isdemus,” she said as her head fell to the side, surrendering to the power of the magic healing her.

  When she was out, Isdemus laid a kiss upon her lips. “It was not only duty that brought me to your bed, Decima. Remember this in your final hours, which will come to you, but not yet.”

  * * *

  Jesse watched Decima play with a small boy. She rolled a ball across the floor to him, which he caught and spun around in his hands. He watched her with wide, inquisitive eyes, but even when she asked him questions, he merely blinked in response.

  “Go on then, Dain. Roll it back to me.”

  Dain slumped his shoulder and rolled the ball to the corner. He jumped to his feet and went to sit in the small rocker in the corner of the room.

  “You have invited your own disappointment. He is not a pup to train,” the king chided. Decima cast a disgusted glance away from him as he approached, but when she turned to face him, it was a pained smile she wore.

  “He is a boy, who needs his father.”

  “He is the next king of this realm. He needs discipline.”

  “Then give him that,” she charged. “For until now, you have given him nothing.”

  The king ripped her by the arm so hard she saw stars. “Beware that mouth, Decima. For you are not with child at present.”

  Decima fled the room. Jesse expected his vision to follow her, but it stayed with the king and the small sullen boy named Dain. The king watched his son with such an uncomfortable awkwardness that Jesse wanted to tear his eyes away, but that was not how the visions worked.

  “Dain,” the king said. When the boy didn’t look up from his slow rocking, he said it once more, with such force Dain was startled into looking up. “Why do you not mind your mother?”

  Dain seemed afraid of the man who was supposed to be his father. The king asked the question once more, and Dain shrugged, but he flinched at the end of it, as if expecting to be hit for it.

  “If she rolls a ball to you, you roll it back. Kings do not skulk in corners, crying. Do they?”

  Dain shook his head.

  “Answer me, boy.”

  “No,” Dain said in a cracking, timid voice.

  “You are still a babe, but you are old enough to understand that you are a prince of this realm. As princes of this realm, we are charged with the happiness of this realm. Of Duncarrow. When your mother is happy, she comes to my bed. When she is cross, as she was when she left this room, my bed grows cold. There are others to warm it, but there can be only one queen to bear me a legacy. Do you understand?”

  “No, Father.”

  “No, but you will. And until then, Dain? Roll the fucking ball.”

  * * *

  “No, Oldwin. There must be another way.”

  The king looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, his tunic hung from one shoulder, unbuttoned. The stubble on his chin told of the time he’d been in such disarray.

  “There is not, Your Grace, unless you wish to see the ruin of Duncarrow and all the Rhiagains have worked for in this kingdom.”

  “Take Assyria then!”

  “She is not your heir. She can never be your heir. So she cannot bring the destruction upon us that I bore witness to.”

  “If you do this, then she will be my heir, for there is no other.”

  “Yet.”

  Jesse got a closer look at this man called Oldwin. He was both old and eternally young, evidence of each reflected equally in his eyes. But he was not a man at all, no more than Isdemus.

  Oldwin seemed to be in a barely contained state of glee over whatever he’d just asked of the king.

  “What does Mortain say?”

  “He sees the same as me, Your Grace. He sees the end, unless you stop it.”

  Khain’s knees buckled. “And Isdemus? Has there been... word of him?”

  “None. But nor would I trust the counsel of one who would leave you so easily as he has.”

  “Tell me the prophecy again. Speak slowly, so that I may hear the words in my own way,” Khain commanded.

  Oldwin folded his hands over his robe. “From you will spring a line that will undo your legacy and restore the Reaches to their own kingdoms, as it was in the time before the Rhiagains. Duncarrow will burn down to the rocks, leaving only salt and ash.”

  Khain drank his wine straight from the bottle, nodding through Oldwin’s retelling. Bleary-eyed, he waved the bottle at the sorcerer, brightening. “That does not specifically say it has to be a son. Nowhere does it say it must be a son!”

  “What woman do you know that is capable of such mayhem?”

  “Do not underestimate a Rhiagain woman. They are not like other women.”

  Oldwin scoffed. “I have known more than you have. Do not forget it.”

  “Take Assyria. Decima may again be with child, take that one.”

  “Do not be foolish, Your Grace. You are ruling with your heart, when a king must rule with his head.”

  “My heart? I have no great affection for the boy! But I have no other heir, Oldwin. Decima has not been well.”

  “Yes,” Oldwin said with a tight smile. “N
ot since Isdemus disappeared.”

  “She was fond of him,” Khain agreed, oblivious to Oldwin’s deeper meaning. “He saved her life when Dain was born. She may not survive her next lying in. If she births another girl, I am lost.”

  “Not lost. There are many Rhiagains who would clamor to be your wife.”

  “I am not young any longer, Oldwin.” Khain dropped the empty bottle. It rolled to the hearth.

  “Age matters to a queen. Not to a king.”

  “He is my son.”

  Oldwin knelt before Khain. “Do not trouble yourself with it, Your Grace. I will see it done myself, so that your conscience can live in peace.”

  “Peace,” Khain repeated, sniffling. “I’ll never know it again.”

  Oldwin stood. He seemed impatient to leave, to see the task completed. “I will advise when the deed is done.”

  “No, not you. Give it to the Lord Chancellor. And then see him retired from court. He is old, and his time at an end in my service.”

  “Your Grace?”

  “I can never again look upon the face of a man who would murder my son.”

  Oldwin bowed. “Yes. That, I can understand.”

  Khain buried his face in his hands, but he did not stay the sorcerer from his brutal task.

  45

  The Dangerous Business of Treason

  “Where is that bloody boy with my water and wine?” Mortain muttered. He kicked at the empty bucket. It went sailing into the dirt wall. The guard at the door flinched. There’d been another guard, but he’d sent him in search of the servant who’d been gone nigh one tick of the moon longer than he should have.

  The boy far more valuable to him, Brandyn, slumped over in the chair, sleeping. It could not be restful. Mortain hoped it was not. He hoped the boy was plagued with nightmares of what would happen if he did not cooperate. Nothing in his young imagination could prepare him for it. Mortain drew energy from the boy’s fear. It sustained him, as wine sustained men.

  Mortain intended to kill him either way. The Blackwood heir was useful now for the information he held, but he would be far more valuable dead, leaving his Reach absent of a proper lord. The Westerlands had been as stable as the Northerlands over the years, and the chaos unfolding within its borders now would spread to the entire realm soon. It already had.

  But, though he would most definitely kill the child, he would perform the deed quickly if Brandyn no longer put up such a fight. He wasn’t entirely convinced he could be the one to strike the death blow, for there was yet Ravenwood blood in the boy’s veins, however weakened. He would enjoy it less, but if it came down to it, he’d force the guard to finish the job.

  Brandyn had fire in him, like his mother. Like all Ravenwoods. He would kill that, too, before the end. In all of them, if he had the power.

  He didn’t, yet. But he would.

  “If that servant doesn’t appear before the boy wakes on his own, I’ll feed your blood to the prisoner,” Mortain warned the remaining guard.

  The guard lowered his head with a pitiful look. Mortain despised weakness, and even more so, fear born of it. How powerless they all were here, these men who served men, who had never known real greatness. Who had no idea what existed just beyond their borders.

  Mortain turned again to regard his handiwork of the Blackwood boy. He’d made a right mess of the kid. He’d heard the boy was twelve, but had someone told the sorcerer that the child was eight, that would have been just as easy to believe. He looked hardly old enough to be free of the teat. Perhaps he’d be doing him a favor in the end. What kind of mother would allow a baby to wander the kingdom and fall into the hands of the enemy?

  Mortain didn’t remember his own mother, if he’d even had one. He must have. The sorcerers were not made only of magic. His flesh and blood was not spun from air.

  He started to have another go at the guard when he picked up something faint. Almost words, but no, this was something else. He strained to hear them.

  They came from Brandyn. Mortain’s mouth parted in wonder. So it had happened. The boy had slipped far enough into rest that his mind was no longer strong enough to hold the protection.

  Mortain leaned in. He listened.

  “Guard,” Mortain barked when he was done. “Where’s Waters?”

  “Preparing the Guard, sir. For the city’s defense.”

  “I need him.” The guard hesitated, and Mortain would have killed him if he had time to find someone else to fetch the steward. “I need him now!”

  Waters arrived just as a boy finally returned with the things he’d asked for. It was not the same boy, which was good fortune for the old one.

  “The Southerland Guard is arriving from the south,” Mortain said. “They—”

  “Where else would they arrive from?” Waters interrupted, annoyed. “Our men are already stationed south of the city.”

  “Can I finish?”’

  Mads grunted.

  “They were given instructions not to move without a very specific command. A command only Lord Warwick and Lord Blackwood possess.”

  Waters grunted. “Not a problem. We’ll move on them.”

  “No. We will not move on them,” Mortain answered, enjoying the discomfort spreading over the commander’s face as he stepped slowly closer. “You will withdraw your men from their positions and bring them back to Whitechurch.”

  “I will not!”

  “You will.”

  “Are you mad? Why even suggest such a thing? You’d bring the battle here?”

  “You will bring your men back to the city, and then you will assume command of the Saleen. I will tell you the words they require to follow your lead, and with these words you will take them south. You will send word, using the command I give you, to Hamish Strong of the Southerland Guard, and when he attacks, I will send the Saleen to meet them. Your men will see to it that the Saleen do not veer off course.”

  Waters twisted his mouth into a smirk. A dim light appeared behind his eyes. “I see what you’re after here, Mortain. Let’s not waste our own men when we have creatures less than men to go in their place.”

  “Something like that.”

  Mads frowned. “Why issue a command to the Southerlands at all? Just set the Saleen on them when they’re fat in their suppers and be done with it.”

  Mortain harnessed the last of his patience. He wouldn’t need Mads Waters much longer, but he did need him now. “The hold I have over the Saleen has limitations. In their numbers, I can command them to move as one, en masse, but I cannot—” He grimaced. The pain of saying these words, to this creature, was unbearable. “I cannot control them each as individuals, as would be needed in battle. If I send them to battle, even the dimmest of the men fighting for the Southerlands will see they bear no swords, no armor. Not a horse between them.”

  “Won’t they see that anyway?”

  Mortain closed his eyes. How fulfilling it would be to kill him here, now. “Yes, but it will not matter against a command from their lord and leader. They will not have the indulgence to avail themselves of such questions, for their lord will have decided things for them. They will be left with no choice.”

  “It will be a bloodbath. For us. For the Saleen, I mean. We’ll be handing victory to the Southerlands.”

  “This battle, yes.”

  “And the war?”

  “What war, Waters? The one here in the Easterlands I aim to prevent by redirecting the kingdom’s ire toward those who would annihilate an entire race? Or the one that will spring as a result of it?”

  Mads’ mouth parted.

  “Now do you understand? Have you achieved comprehension? Or will it take standing here for hours, as I break things down for you as I would for a child, before these strategies slip between the cracks of your thick skull and make landing?”

  Mads turned away from him. His lips twitched, but, deciding better of whatever he thought of saying, left.

  * * *

  Khallum waited with Storm behind
the wheelhouse. The traitor’s suggestion of the servant’s entrance had served them this far, but they’d not make it any farther without a plan. Oakenwell, wearing his Quinlanden armor, had gone ahead to scout for a place to slip in. He suspected Brandyn was in the dungeons, but they had no way to confirm. The only one who knew was the traitor, and he never had a chance to say before Storm unceremoniously slit his throat.

  The girl wouldn’t stop twitching. Raw bloodlust burned in her eyes. He recognized it well enough, but in her small body it unnerved him. Her anger lived within her unrestrained. Her loyalty to Brandyn might come at the expense of her life, and she was not only willing but eager to pay this price.

  “Quit yer pacing,” Khallum commanded. “Won’t help. Save it.”

  “I don’t need your counsel,” Storm answered. She stood with her back to the wall, dagger drawn. Her free hand rested on the hilt of her small sword. It looked like the sort of thing she might have been gifted by a loving father at the autumnwhile celebration, akin to a soft pat on the head. “And I intend to be ready, if whoever comes around that corner is not Steward Oakenwell. Or if you were wrong about him.”

  “How many men have you led into battle, girl?”

  “How many have you?”

  He realized his error as soon as the words were out. Imagining a day like this wasn’t the same as doing. He at last had the allies, but his place had come not on the battle line but skulking behind the scenes on a recovery mission.

  “He’s been gone long enough. I’m sick of waiting for him to betray us. I’ll figure this out myself,” Storm said and started out into the open, but Khallum grabbed her back. “Let me go! You think I won’t kill you, because you’ve got a lord in front of your name?”

  “Ye won’t be killing me if one of them takes you out first.” Khallum held her with one arm and pointed with the free one. “Did you even look?”

  Storm squirmed free, but remained reluctantly at his side. “You were wrong not to send word to the soldiers. We need them. We’ll never move freely or quickly enough without them.”