A River of Royal Blood

by Amanda Joy

  I needed to visit the Temple.

  * * *

  I changed quickly into a saffron dress with skirts divided for riding and retrieved the pine box shoved into a shadowy corner of the highest shelf in my dressing room. It was about the size of my hand and carved with flowering trees, with a sturdy brass lock on the front. I’d lost the key years ago, but found that a hairpin worked just as well. I worked it into the lock, my shoulders relaxing when it clicked open.

  An old gift from my father, the box had been one of the few things I brought when I ran from Ternain. There were four treasures inside: two flat orange rocks with fissures of white, the skull of a small bird, and a gold necklace with a pendant shaped like a snake’s open mouth, a lapis stone gripped between its fangs.

  I’d gotten the charm visiting a village a few miles outside of Asrodei. The old woman selling it had promised me it would ward off my enemies. Unsurprisingly it didn’t work—charms rarely did—but when I focused through the stone, I could smell magick even when it wasn’t being used. If I cast my awareness in a wide net, I would sense the approach of anyone unfamiliar. It would be of little use at the Temple today, where magick was constantly taught, but I couldn’t leave my rooms without it again.

  Had I worn it last night, it would’ve given me warning.

  I slipped the charm over my wrist just as a knock sounded. Looping the chain until it was snug, I called for the person to enter. I expected Mirabel, but Captain Anali opened the door instead.

  Earlier she’d said little in response to the news about my magick, but that wasn’t unexpected. When we’d first met, her silences vexed me. I chattered to fill them during our training, hoping that something would pique her interest or bring a smile. Now I knew better. She was always listening, but wouldn’t share her feelings until she was ready. She never spoke in anger or without careful consideration.

  “I sent the guard to prepare our horses,” she said, leaning against the cabinet where my real jewels were kept. “How do you feel?”

  I felt like a teapot with the dregs stuck to the bottom, empty. “I’m fine. You needn’t worry. The healer sorted my wounds.” Even the bruise around my neck had been healed.

  She nodded. “Ah, that’s good to hear. My first time, I vomited on the poor bastard. Luckily he was already dead, but it was not my finest performance.”

  “Your first time killing someone?”

  “I wasn’t much older than you. It was my first week in the Queen’s Army, and no one was interested in having a beast in their midst. I was in the barracks sleeping when he tried to knife me. Didn’t have a weapon, so my shadows did the trick.” She lifted a hand; shadows like velvety black flames danced around her fingers before sinking back into her skin. “Choked the life out of him before I realized what was happening. Had your father not protected me, they would’ve hanged me.”

  Anali always said she had had a rough time when she first enlisted, but I never knew about these attacks. They were the worst kind of vile, but the sort of foulness Myre was built upon. Humans thrived here not because of our accomplishments, but because of what we’d stolen from the khimaer. We’d shown through the Enclosures that khimaer lived and died according to what humans decreed. Of course these men had decided they had a right to Anali’s life.

  For most humans, khimaer were the monsters that lurked in the night, never mind that Raina had conquered and caged them centuries ago. Guilt and fear turned so easily to hatred.

  If I became Queen, which was doubtful at this point, I hoped to change much of that. My father believed Myre would eventually fall if we didn’t integrate the khimaer back into the Queendom, and he’d chosen Mirabel as my nursemaid and introduced me to Captain Anali so they could guide me. My mother was considered a revolutionary simply for letting khimaer join the Queen’s Army, but freedom that could cost your life was just enslavement under a different name. Whether Myre fell or not, the Enclosures had to be abolished. I couldn’t allow them to go on like the Queens who came before me had done.

  It would be worth ruling, if only to change those two things.

  I met the Captain’s soot-gray eyes. “I’m sorry, Anali.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “It isn’t your sin to carry.”

  I fingered the hidden pocket at my hip where I’d stashed a knife. “Did you regret it?”

  “For weeks I dreamed about knocking him out instead. Not because I cared about his life. This was a man so full of hate that he would attack a fellow soldier. I didn’t believe he deserved to be etched in my memory.” Her laugh was a bitter thing. “It wasn’t a week before the next attack came and I hesitated, searching for a way we could both live.

  “That was a mistake.” She undid the first two buttons on her white jacket and pointed to a puckered inch-long scar on her collarbone. A few inches higher and she would have died.

  “How often . . . how many soldiers attacked you?”

  She took her time buttoning the jacket back up. I caught a flash of white-and-black feathers curling around the nape of her neck, quickly hidden beneath the fabric. “In my first year, seven. I remember all of their faces. Sometimes I wish I could forget, but it’s right that I carry their deaths. Killing should never be simple, nor easily washed away.”

  “How do you live with it?”

  “I accept it.” She shrugged. “You will have guilt, Eva. But you won’t regret being alive to feel that guilt.”

  “I don’t regret his death,” I said, and blushed when she arched an eyebrow. “I shouldn’t regret it. He wanted to kill me. It may have been a job, but . . . He wanted to kill me.” I shuddered at the memory of the sadistic pleasure in his eyes when he spoke of a slow death. “It’s just, I don’t want to be a killer, Anali. I wish I’d at least done it with my knife.”

  The justice the assassin had deserved was a hangman’s noose. Not my magick ripping blood from his neck.

  “Why?”

  “You’ve heard the stories, Anali. You know what this magick is capable of.”

  She nodded solemnly. “You know what we believe.” Khimaer believed that magick was neither good nor bad. It was a gift of the land, given to everyone in the Queendom. “We decide how to use our gifts. You shouldn’t be ashamed to use magick to protect yourself, no matter how violent or powerful it is.”

  “I can’t just stop feeling something so easily, Anali.”

  “I know, but you have to decide what you fear more—your magick, or being killed.”

  With that, she left my dressing room.

  Days ago, I would have had trouble answering that question, but after seeing my death in the assassin’s eyes, I knew no fear of my magick could compare to the fear of death. Even if I had to become the wicked girl of my nightmares, a maelstrom of marrow and blood, I would do whatever it took to stay alive.

  CHAPTER 6

  I SAT ASTRIDE Bird, my palomino mare, as the Temple came into view.

  Perched on a hill in the heart of the human sector, the white sandstone pyramid was the highest point in the capital besides the Queen’s Palace. Steps painted in alternating shades of gold and blue led up to an opening at its zenith. A lush garden surrounded the Temple, with rows of palm trees and cacti, and bright crane flowers and orchids that couldn’t have bloomed in this heat without magickal assistance. Two obelisks stood at the base of the steps. One was carved with the symbols of Sorceryn tattooing, and the other depicted the Auguries’ domain: stars, the moon, and other heavenly bodies.

  The Sorceryn, men who dedicated their lives to the study of magick, dwelled in the bottom half of the Temple. Their feminine counterpart, the Auguries, lived in its upper reaches, mapping the omens and interpreting their visions. They also kept the largest library in Akhimar.

  Beneath my riding glove the lapis pendant pressed painfully into my palm. I hadn’t bothered to use it as we rode here, since the guard kept a close eye on everyo
ne we passed, but now I couldn’t help but test myself. Dozens of patrons walked up and down the steps, young parents with children in tow, students with parchment tubes on their shoulders, and Sorceryn gliding up and down those stairs in diaphanous robes. I focused on the cool weight of the stone and drew in a deep breath.

  The smells of a hundred different magicks swirled around me. Ginger and smoke came from the boy with fiery tattoos on his palms, the ink only half done. A young girl with a pen nib caught between her lips smelled of juniper and hazelnuts. The Sorceryn smelled of winter stew, layered with different flavors, the scents impossible to pick apart. The competing scents threatened to give me a headache, so I relaxed as we drew rein at the steps.

  Captain Anali and I dismounted as a Sorceryn approached. He was tall and solemn-faced, with pinched features and golden-brown skin gone thin with age. His shaved head glowed in the afternoon sun.

  “Your Highness, my name is Jorin. I am honored by your presence,” the Sorceryn said. I caught a warm smile before he bowed.

  For a spell-worker, he wasn’t very powerful. Sorceryn acquired magick throughout their lives and inked the symbols of those new magicks until they ran out of skin. Tattoos often covered their ears and scalp, leaving only their faces unmarked, but Jorin’s only peeked out from his collar.

  “And I by yours, Brother Jorin,” I replied, in a voice I hoped sounded sincere. Though they had failed me, I tried to respect the spell-workers. More than a century had passed between Queen Raina’s birth and my own; it wasn’t their fault that the Sorceryn of the past had been negligent in their records.

  “We had hoped you would visit our halls sooner when you returned to the Capital.” There was a hopeful light in the Sorceryn’s eyes, and in his voice, a searching. Like everyone else in Ternain, he wondered if the rumors of my inability were still true.

  “My duties at Court take up much of my time.” I fought to keep my voice light. That was the only way to escape conversations like this one unscathed.

  “Many of my brethren were dismayed to learn the King’s search yielded little fruit.”

  Of course they were. What good was a Rival Heir without magick?

  “As was I.” I smiled. “But I have not come today to discuss my magick. I would ask for your escort to the library.”

  Jorin bobbed his head in agreement. I knew the look in his eyes—disappointment, regret, and cringing pity. He was seeing my death.

  Just as I’d seen it in the assassin’s eyes last night.

  Anali counted out five guards including herself and Falun. Jorin gestured and three hostlers approached to take our horses to the stables behind the Temple. I stuffed my gloves into my saddlebags but kept the pendant hidden in my fist.

  Sweat trickled down my back as we mounted the steps. We reached the top, all but Jorin winded from the ascent, and he led us through an unadorned archway into a wide antechamber, tiled from floor to ceiling in pale gold. There were doors on opposite sides of the room, one marked with a fist and the other with a crescent moon.

  Each door in the Temple was adorned with one of the symbols, the fist indicating rooms where the Sorceryn worked, and the moon signifying the Auguries’ chambers.

  We took the second, and walked through stone hallways lit by floating orbs of blue-white magickal light. The sight of them reminded me of the assassin’s light magick, my stomach turning as I smelled his blood again.

  We stopped before two oversize doors, the wood inlaid with silver depicting the full cycle of the moon. At a flick of Brother Jorin’s wrist, a gust of wind blew the doors open. “Welcome to the Auguri library.”

  We were greeted first by words inscribed onto the shell-pink marble floor: May the pages of our books number vast as the stars, so that we can know the world as we have learned the skies.

  The library was exactly as I remembered. Its main room was an immense circular chamber, with three mezzanine floors where the majority of the library’s collection was stored. Hanging ferns covered the upper balconies and there were small potted trees placed throughout the room. Sunlight streamed through a glass ceiling, illuminating the scholars seated at a row of long tables. Perhaps their books held more interest than I did, or they were intimidated by soldiers. Either way, none stirred at my appearance.

  The only flutter of movement was at the back of the room, and soon a human girl in a rumpled blue tunic and trousers was skidding to a stop before us. She looked no older than fourteen, with a cloud of dense black curls and chestnut skin. Hazel eyes took up most of her round face and there was a tattoo of a yellow sun in the center of her forehead.

  Sarou, library clerk and the Auguries’ only apprentice, was a peculiarity. When we first met, I was less than half my current age. She looked just the same now as she did then, all sharp elbows and ink stains, her eyes innocent as a child’s until she started recounting ancient history with the confidence of someone who’d lived it.

  We first met when I was on a trip to the library with my father. I was seven when Isadore began her lessons with the Sorceryn. Most mornings, Papa would bring us both to the Temple together. We would drop Isa off in the chambers below, and go to the library until she was done. While Papa studied old maps, I tried to count the rooms of the library. Dozens of smaller rooms were connected to its central chamber, hidden in those upper floors, but I could never get an accurate count. My father always intercepted me before I could venture far. Then, one afternoon, I found Sarou sitting on top of a bookshelf, a leather-bound book open on her lap. She’d jumped down and promptly told me the number of rooms—twenty-eight—before shooing me away. But when she turned her back, I followed her, asking about the library and the sun inked above her eyes.

  In every visit after, I sought her out, always with more questions than she was willing to answer. I was ten before I realized that as I grew taller, Sarou was ever the same.

  All Auguries and Sorceryn were unusually long-lived for humans, but whatever had caused Sarou to cease aging entirely, she wouldn’t say. Nor would she explain how exactly the Auguries’ visions worked, or if they were guided by magick. Whenever I asked about them or the Blood Moon, she’d replied, You will learn our secrets when you become Queen, and not a moment before.

  I wondered if she would say the same if I told her the likelihood of that had greatly diminished.

  Sarou bent at the waist and smiled as if no time had passed at all. “Hello, Lady Eva.”

  She straightened from her bow and I was surprised—and annoyed—to see we were of an even height now. Sarou was quite tall for the age she appeared and I’d gotten none of my mother’s statuesque figure.

  “Hello, Sarou. Are any of the Sisters about?”

  “They are busy”—she shrugged—“interpreting the omen from last night’s sky.”

  And why, I wanted to know, aren’t you with them? But that was not a question Sarou would answer.

  “The Blood Moon?” I asked. In a way, I was pleased. Whenever we visited the library when I was a child, my father had insisted we call on at least one of the Auguries. Like Sarou, they all had tattoos above their eyes—of the sun, the moon, or a cluster of stars, sometimes even the far-off worlds they had named, like three-ringed Clyastis or Juni of the six moons—and their gazes were always far away. Those looks seemed cultivated to add to their air of mystery. When I could, I avoided all but Sarou, fearing they would have another omen to drop upon my shoulders.

  Another part of me—the part that would live forever in that alley remembering the assassin’s flesh giving way—wanted to see the Auguries now. I needed to know if their visions held more for me than the running of blood and the rending of flesh.

  Sarou smiled obliquely. “And others. There is much more to the sky than one red moon. There are hundreds of omens, and thousands more across the tremendous sky beyond our sight. Eclipses of the moon and sun, stars falling, worlds we can only glimpse once a year.�
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  “And will you still refuse to tell me of them? Or why there is a sun on your head, and not the moon?” I already knew all of this.

  “If you’ve come back to the Temple just to ask questions I will not answer, I will return to my work.” She glanced over her shoulder at the large desk at the back of the library. The table itself was clear, but several towers of books around it were as tall as a man.

  I told Sarou what I needed and she brought us to a small room—with shelves built into the walls and three round tables, each equipped with a brass lamp, an hourglass, an inkwell and pen, and a roll of parchment—to wait while she searched. I might’ve gone with her, but only Sarou knew the library’s complete system of organization. Having five soldiers and a Princess in tow would only delay her.

  Anali and three other guards sat down at a table, but Falun stayed by my side as I walked to the opposite side of the room. There were private study chambers like this all over the library, but I knew this one. Sarou had likely chosen it on purpose.

  My father had once favored it. He liked to spread his work across all three tables, pen resting behind one ear, with an inkwell and a sheet of parchment in hand as he walked back and forth, taking notes. Every good General, he would tell me, should be an even greater scholar. We learn first from the battles of the past and apply the lessons they taught to conflicts we engage in today.

  I crouched, feeling around under one of the bookshelves until my fingers scraped against two words etched into the wood. I sank to the floor, tracing them as I slipped into a memory.

  Isadore lay on her back, golden hair spread out behind her like fine silk. She had a ruby earring in one hand and was using the post to etch words into the shelf. I settled down beside her. Isa clasped my hand and followed the sloping lines of our names. Now even if no one writes a book about us, we’ll still be here forever.