Wicked Saints

by Emily A Duncan

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  Serefin Meleski leaned against the tunnel entrance and squinted out into the snow. The sun had nearly set, but the reflection was blinding against his—admittedly terrible—vision.

  “You’re letting them get away,” Ostyia whined at his side.

  He ignored her, instead picking up his spell book from where it was strapped to his hip, flipping it open. He riffled through the pages in silence before tearing one out. He dropped the book and held his arm out to Ostyia.

  Her eye narrowed and she glanced down at the knife in her hand. She snatched his wrist and dragged the blade over his palm.

  “Not his hand,” Kacper protested from where he was leaning against the opposite wall of the tunnel.

  Serefin ignored him as well, lifting his hand. He watched the blood quickly well up from the cut and drip in slow rivulets down his palm. It stung, but the surge of magic that would come canceled out any minor pain. He moved the spell book page into his bleeding hand, letting the blood soak into the paper. Magic ignited hot in his veins, and as the page slipped into dusky tendrils of smoke, his vision sharpened. A trail leading straight to the cleric showed vividly as red streaks against the snow.

  He smiled. “She can run.”

  “Is it wise to tether yourself to her with that spell?” Ostyia asked.

  “She won’t be able to feel it. It’s not a tether, just a trail.”

  It wouldn’t matter how far she ran; he would be able to keep track of her as long as he fed blood into the spell at occasional intervals. Easily done.

  “Confident,” Kacper noted.

  Serefin shot him a bland look. “Even if she feels it, she won’t be able to break it.”

  “You don’t know anything about the magic she was using. How do you know she won’t feel it?”

  Serefin frowned. Kacper was right, but he wasn’t about to admit that.

  “Have the men round up those still alive and contain them,” he said to Ostyia.

  She nodded and disappeared down the tunnel.

  Kacper watched her go. “Why aren’t you going after her?” The sleeve of his coat had nearly been shorn off during battle; it was holding on by a few threads, and his gold epaulet hung haphazardly off his arm. He tugged a brown hand through his dark curls and appeared surprised when he found them matted with blood. “We’ve been looking for evidence of a bloody cleric for ages and we finally found one.”

  “Do you want to be stumbling around in the dark in the middle of the Kalyazi mountains?” Serefin asked.

  Their company had already experienced firsthand how deadly a Kalyazi winter could be to those unfamiliar with the terrain. Besides, Serefin could barely see on a good day and his night vision was worse. Understanding lit Kacper’s dark eyes and he nodded.

  Serefin had been on the front in Kalyazin for almost three years with only the occasional leave to return home. In all that time it was as though winter never ended. Even Kalyazin’s melt season felt cold. It was only snow and frost and forests. For the last five months Serefin had charged his company to look for evidence of Kalyazi magic. His father had been adamant it existed, that it was vital Serefin find these clerics. They could tilt the course of the war in Kalyazin’s favor and that would not do, especially now, after a decisive strike against Kalyazin had finally been won. Tranavia had claimed the Kalyazi city of Voldoga only weeks earlier, a vital outpost for the enemy. It was the first step in finally turning this endless war to their side.

  “With any luck, she’ll lead us to more of her kind,” Serefin said. He started back into the tunnel, but paused.

  Passing an absent hand over the scar that cut across his eye, he turned to Kacper.

  “Light?” The word came out condescending, a brittle command instead of a request. Any other time he would have had slightly more consideration for Kacper’s feelings, but exhaustion made him callow.

  “Yes, sorry.” Kacper fumbled for a torch that had fallen to the ground and relit it.

  They passed the storeroom where the Kalyazi girls had been hiding and found Serefin’s lieutenant general, Teodore Kijek, poking around.

  “Send word to my father about today’s events,” Serefin told him. He didn’t bother mentioning the cleric. Best if his father thought the cleric escaped; he didn’t need to know Serefin had let her go.

  “Of course, Your Highness.”

  “Do we have a count for how many Kalyazi survived?”

  “I estimate about a dozen,” Teodore replied.

  Serefin made a soft sound of assent. He would have to decide what they were going to do with the prisoners and he could not say he relished the task.

  “Do we know if the girl was the only cleric among them?” He couldn’t imagine luck shining on him in such a way, but he could dream.

  “If there are others, they have not yet revealed themselves to us,” Teodore said.

  “Perhaps they can be persuaded?” Kacper mused, his dark eyes sparkling with anticipation.

  Serefin had a proven aptitude for being particularly convincing.

  He nodded curtly. Persuaded indeed. “We will remain here for the night.” He glanced into the storeroom; the Kalyazi girls had not looted it entirely. “Clear all this out as well,” he continued, waving a hand. He would ferret out information while keeping tabs on the cleric as she ran. It seemed like a valuable way to spend his time before he heard back from his father.

  “Of course, Your Highness,” Teodore said.

  Serefin motioned Teodore away and continued on with Kacper.

  “Why on earth have you not sent him back to the front yet?” Kacper asked.

  Serefin glanced over at Kacper, who stood to his left, on his blind side. Kacper fell back a step, moving to Serefin’s other side.

  “Can you imagine what my father would do if I got rid of his spy?”

  Kacper winced. “Well, at least when we fetch the cleric we can go home. There won’t be a reason for the king to keep us out here any longer.”

  Serefin raked a hand through his brown hair. It desperately needed a trim. He was tired—no, not tired, bone-deep weary. Finally discovering the cleric was a stroke of brilliant luck, but it didn’t change that he had been in an enemy kingdom for years yet dreaded the thought of returning home. The war was all he knew at this point. They walked the rest of the tunnel in silence before finally reaching the graveyard.

  The monastery was a larger complex than Serefin had expected, with far better guards. He found Ostyia observing the prisoners as they were rounded up in the courtyard. He sent Kacper to find a suitable place for him to spend the night, though he sensed there would be nothing in this dour prison that wasn’t a stone slab and threadbare blanket. Why were monks so damned austere? There was nothing wrong with sleeping comfortably. But he would accept a concrete slab and threadbare blanket over yet another night spent out on the snow.

  Ostyia fiddled with the patch over her eye before finally taking it off and stowing it in her pocket. A jagged, ugly scar crossed her face over the ravaged, empty socket of her left eye.

  When Serefin and Ostyia were children, Kalyazi assassins had infiltrated the palace disguised as weapons masters meant to train the young prince and nobleman’s daughter. The assassins had gone for their eyes first. Perhaps blinding the children of the enemy before murdering them was a religious thing.

  Ostyia often liked to leave her scarred eye socket uncovered. She relished looking terrifying and claimed she was saving her eye patch days for the sea if the war ever ended. Her gaze cut to the spell book at Serefin’s hip.

  “That looks thin,” she pointed out.

  He sighed and nodded, picking up the book and riffling through it. He was running out of spells.

  “Something tells me we won’t find a book binder in the heart of Kalyazin who does spell books.”

  “No, probably not,” Ostyia agreed. “Besides”—a teasing note entered her voice—“even if we did, she wouldn’t be half as good as Madame Petra.�
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  Serefin shuddered as he thought of the overbearing elderly woman who bound all of his spell books. He could never figure out if she treated him like a long dead son or lover. He was disturbed he couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Did you not bring any extras?”

  “I’ve worked through all my extras.” Which meant the possibility of being trapped in the middle of enemy country without a spell book.

  “Well,” Ostyia said, “I suppose you could take one of the lower ranking mages’ books if you need to.”

  “And leave them defenseless?” Serefin raised an eyebrow. “Ostyia, I’m heartless, but I’m not cruel. I can manage fine enough with a blade in my hand.”

  “Yeah, and leave me to work my ass off, keeping you safe.”

  Serefin shot her a dirty look. She glanced up at him, smiling cheekily.

  “Forgive my tone, Your Highness,” she said, curtsying dramatically.

  He rolled his eyes.

  They were splitting up the prisoners into containable groups where they would be locked in the sparse, cell-like bedrooms. Serefin’s eyes narrowed on a boy about his own age who was holding himself up on the shoulder of an older man.

  “That one,” he said, pointing out the man to Ostyia. “Pull him out. I want to question him.”

  Her face lit. “The boy?”

  “Not like that. He already has a crossbow bolt sticking out of his leg, and no, the old man. I’ll speak to the boy later.”

  Her face fell. “His Highness will forgive me if I say he is absolutely no fun.”

  “I will not.”

  She had the man brought over to them. Serefin guessed him to be the leader of the monastery. Did those have a title? Serefin wasn’t sure.

  “Do you train all your people for war now?” Serefin asked pleasantly, resting his hand on his too-thin spell book. Before the man could answer, he held up his other hand, stopping him. “Forgive me, I should introduce myself, my name is Serefin Meleski, High Prince of Tranavia.”

  “I am Father Alexei,” the man said. “And yes, even those not conscripted into the army receive some training. It’s necessary, wouldn’t you say?”

  Maybe the tactic was necessary for Kalyazin, but the war had never breached Tranavia’s borders. Regardless, Serefin was surprised at the civility in the old man’s tone.

  “A holy war that has raged for near a century calls for extreme measures,” Alexei continued.

  “Yes, yes, we’re nasty heretics that need to be eradicated from the earth and you’re just doing what’s right,” Serefin said.

  The priest merely shrugged. “Simple truth.”

  Ostyia was tense at Serefin’s side. He shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled at the old man.

  “But you have magic of your own, don’t you? Tell me, how many of your mages—what do you call them, clerics?—are hiding in Kalyazin? We know about the one here, don’t bother trying to protect her, she’ll be in our custody within the day.”

  The old priest smiled. “They are called clerics, yes. I have no information that can aid you in this, young prince.”

  Serefin frowned. He wished the man was patronizing him so he could at least work up the necessary righteous anger, but there was nothing of the sort in his voice.

  He wasn’t going to press the point, not right now and not with the priest. The boy with the crossbow wound was the one who had shielded the cleric and helped her escape. He was the one to talk to.

  Serefin directed a soldier to take the priest away.

  “Do you want to question someone else?” Ostyia asked.

  “No.” Serefin caught Kacper’s eye from where he was speaking with a mage nearby and waved him over. “Religious folk drink wine, correct?”

  Ostyia shrugged.

  “There are casks of wine in the cellar,” Kacper offered.

  Serefin gave a quick nod. “Perfect. I want to be blind drunk before the night is out.”

  4

  NADEZHDA

  LAPTEVA

  Horz stole the stars and the heavens out from underneath Myesta’s control, and for that she has never forgiven him. For where can the moons rest if not the heavens?

  —Codex of the Divine, 5:26

  “It’s certainly not my fault you chose a child who sleeps so deeply. If she dies it will very much be your fault, not mine.”

  Startled by bickering gods was not Nadya’s preferred method of being woken up. She rolled to her feet in the dark, moving automatically. It took her eyes a few seconds to catch up with the rest of her body.

  Shut up!

  It wasn’t wise to tell the gods to shut up, but it was too late now. A feeling of amused disdain flowed through her, but neither of the gods spoke again. She realized it was Horz, the god of the heavens and the stars, who had woken her. He had a tendency to be obnoxious but generally left Nadya alone, as a rule.

  Usually only a single god communed with their chosen cleric. There once had been a cleric named Kseniya Mirokhina who was gifted with unnatural marksmanship by Devonya, the goddess of the hunt. And Veceslav had chosen a cleric of his own, long ago, but their name was lost to history, and he refused to talk about them. The recorded histories never spoke of clerics who could hear more than one god. That Nadya communed with the entire pantheon was a rarity the priests who trained her could not explain.

  There was a chance older, more primordial gods existed, ones that had long since given up watch of the world and left it in the care of the others. But no one knew for sure. Of the twenty known gods, however, carvings and paintings depicted their human forms, though no one knew what they actually looked like. No cleric throughout history had ever looked upon the faces of the gods. No saint, nor priest.

  Each had their own power and magic they could bestow upon Nadya, and while some were forthcoming, others were not. She had never spoken to the goddess of the moons, Myesta. She wasn’t even sure what manner of power the goddess would give, if she so chose.

  And though she could commune with many gods, it was impossible to forget just who had chosen her for this fate: Marzenya, the goddess of death and magic, who expected complete dedication.

  Indistinct voices murmured in the dark. She and Anna had found a secluded place within a copse of thick pine trees to set up their tent, but it no longer felt safe. Nadya slid a voryen from underneath her bedroll and nudged Anna awake.

  She moved to the mouth of the tent, grasping at her beads, a prayer already forming on her lips, smoky symbols trailing from her mouth. She could see the blurry impressions of figures in the darkness, far off in the distance. It was hard to judge the number, two? Five? Ten? Her heart sped at the possibility that a company of Tranavians were already on her trail.

  Anna drew up beside her. Nadya’s grip on her voryen tightened, but she kept still. If they hadn’t seen their tent yet, she could keep them from noticing it entirely.

  But Anna’s hand clasped her forearm.

  “Wait,” she whispered, her breath frosting out before her in the cold. She pointed to a dark spot just off to the side of the group.

  Nadya pressed her thumb against Bozidarka’s bead and her eyesight sharpened until she could see as clearly as if it were day. It took effort to shove aside the immediate, paralyzing fear as her suspicions were confirmed and Tranavian uniforms became clear. It wasn’t a full company. In fact, they looked rather ragged. Perhaps they had split off and lost their way.

  More interesting, though, was the boy with a crossbow silently aiming into the heart of the group.

  “We can get away before they notice,” Anna said.

  Nadya almost agreed, almost slipped her voryen back into its sheath, but just then, the boy fired and the trees erupted into chaos. Nadya wasn’t willing to use an innocent’s life as a distraction for her own cowardice. Not again.

  Even as Anna protested, Nadya let a prayer form fully in her mind, hand clutching at Horz’s bead on her necklace and its constellation of stars. Symbols fell from her lips like glowing gli
mmers of smoke and every star in the sky winked out.

  Well, that was more extreme than I intended, Nadya thought with a wince. I should’ve known better than to ask Horz for anything.

  She could hear cursing as the world plunged into darkness. Anna sighed in exasperation beside her.

  “Just stay back,” she hissed as she moved confidently through the dark.

  “Nadya…” Anna’s groan was soft.

  It took more focus to send a third prayer to Bozetjeh. It was hard to catch Bozetjeh on a good day; the god of speed was notoriously slow to answer prayers. But she managed to snag his attention and received a spell allowing her to move as fast as the vicious Kalyazin wind.

  Her initial count had been wrong; there were six Tranavians now scattering into the forest. The boy dropped his crossbow with a bewildered look up into the sky, startling when Nadya touched his shoulder.

  There was no way he could see in this darkness, but she could. When he whirled, a curved sword in his hand, Nadya sidestepped. His swing went wide and she shoved him in the direction of a fleeing Tranavian, anticipating their collision.

  “Find the rest,” Marzenya hissed. “Kill them all.”

  Complete and total dedication.

  She caught up to one of the figures, stabbing her voryen into his skull just underneath his ear.

  Not so difficult this time, she thought. But the knowledge was a distant thing.

  Blood sprayed, splattering a second Tranavian, who cried out in alarm. Before the second man could figure out what had happened to his companion, she lashed out her heel, catching him squarely on the jaw and knocking him off his feet. She slit his throat.

  Three more. They couldn’t have moved far. Nadya took up Bozidarka’s bead again. The goddess of vision revealed where the last Tranavians were located. The boy with the sword had managed to kill two in the dark. Nadya couldn’t actually see the last one, just felt him nearby, very much alive.