Wicked Saints

by Emily A Duncan

  She ran. He followed.

  The monsters gave chase.

  Just before they passed the threshold of the sanctuary, Nadya turned, calling on Marzenya and Veceslav both. One to ensure destruction, the other for protection for those she did not wish harmed.

  Then she brought half of the sanctuary down on the Vultures.

  Malachiasz tripped over his own feet, just barely missing being caught by falling debris. His features shifted between something human and something not. They settled on something less than. Nadya shuddered.

  “It won’t be enough,” he said, voice tangled. “We need to get farther away.”

  “And abandon the others?” Nadya’s spells wouldn’t hold forever.

  “The Vultures will try to come after us; they’ll leave the others, they’re inconsequential,” he said.

  Nadya nodded, then turned to run. Malachiasz grabbed her arm. She froze, staring in horror at the iron claws that were inches away from brushing against her skin.

  “Let me go.”

  He did. Immediately. “That won’t be enough.”

  There was no time. The rubble was already starting to shift. It took her a second to realize what he meant. They wouldn’t outrun the Vultures on foot. They needed magic.

  None of the gods could give her magic like that and he looked like he was about to faint. He was swaying on his feet, skin ashen.

  A hand pushed through the rubble. Malachiasz swore. Then there was more blood, dripping down his face, from the corners of his eyes and from his nose. The skin at his wrist split, an iron spike pushing through as if his bones were made of metal. The spike shot off his arm and slammed into the hand in the rubble.

  Nadya was going to be sick.

  “I could get us away, but…” he trailed off.

  He seemed too drained to use any magic. And if they stayed, the Vultures stayed, and Anna and the Akolans would end up dead.

  Malachiasz shuddered. He raked a hand through his hair, smearing blood on his forehead. Watching this boy whom she had just witnessed become something horrific, this boy who had appeared so untouchable, be shaken to his core and worn to his limits made her contemplate doing something unthinkable. Nadya had her beliefs that she would never forfeit, but she also understood the necessity for self-preservation. She had to stay alive to be any good for her country.

  This is walking a dangerous line.

  Nadya was no longer in the monastery; she had to make her own choices.

  “Do blood mages have to use their own blood for magic?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “It’s messy to use anyone else’s so we try to avoid it,” he remarked, voice absent. Then he blinked. “What?”

  She swallowed hard and met his gaze. Her stomach roiled. His black eyes were too disconcerting and she had to look away.

  “I know what you believe about my magic. It’s easy to spread the rumor that blood mages use human sacrifices,” he said slowly; his voice almost sounded normal. “It doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “But can you?”

  He nodded. She swallowed hard, hesitated, feeling her own hands shaking as she fought with the weight of her decision. He would get them out; it would save the others.

  Would she make a dangerous exception of her own principles for the safety of her friend, the only one left, and two potential allies? For the possibility that this ragtag group could turn the war?

  Swallowing hard, she rolled her sleeve back and held her forearm out to him.

  He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. His iron claw was a shard of ice dragging down her skin, parting her flesh. Her breath swept out of her and she prayed she would not live to regret this. She watched with her heart in her throat as the cut welled crimson.

  Blood was not to be spilled for the sake of power. Magic was a divine appointment from the gods. But here her gods-given magic was useless. Doing this one unspeakable thing would keep her alive, keep those she needed to protect alive. She couldn’t destroy these monsters if she died.

  Malachiasz’s eyes narrowed, his fingers tensed around her wrist. “Our secret?” he said.

  She snapped his grip off, flipping it so her hand was clenched around his forearm. “I don’t know what you are,” she said slowly. “But I swear by the gods, if you use this against me it will be the last thing you ever do.”

  The silence that followed was so fraught Nadya could feel him trembling underneath her hand. She had the sense it was the sheer effort of keeping himself in a form that resembled human.

  Who was this boy? Or, rather, what was he? And what had she just done?

  “I understand,” he said.

  She nodded.

  He pulled her to his chest and the surge of power she felt around them nearly knocked her out. She felt herself slipping, felt him materialize into a spray of blood and magic. Then Malachiasz was gone and he took Nadya with him.

  * * *

  When Nadya woke, it was on top of crimson snow. She shivered violently, sitting up. After a quick check, she realized the blood wasn’t hers. She was in the forest, in a snow bank, and still alive. She felt terrible.

  There was a dark form lying a few feet away. She hesitated before stumbling over to Malachiasz, unsure what she would find.

  But whatever had taken over his features was gone now. He was just a boy, pale and unconscious in the cold. He was covered in blood, they both were, but somehow unwounded. Nadya leaned back on her heels and eyed him. He had a soft mouth and his nose was stately. His face was lovely, all the feral, unsettling qualities absent when he wasn’t awake. She wasn’t pleased with herself for noticing, especially not now. As heat rose on her face, it occurred to her she wasn’t sure he was breathing. She had ducked her head down to listen to his chest when his eyes opened, black as pitch.

  “Kill him.”

  Then she was on her back, the weight of Malachiasz’s body pressed onto her. His mouth opened in a snarl and iron teeth glinted against the light; she could feel the ice of his claws press against her neck.

  “Malachiasz!”

  His eyes cleared, the black leaking away until there was almost no color left at all but the palest blue. He stared down at her, slowly moved his hands away from her neck. And then like a startled animal he shot off, staggering backwards until he tripped and landed a few feet away. His expression was troubled. He scanned their surroundings, his face becoming more concerned.

  “Nadya,” he said softly. As if he hadn’t expected for them to escape, to be alive, for him to be himself.

  “Where are we?” she asked, sitting up. She moved to pick up a voryen lying in the snow nearby. She didn’t sheathe it.

  He looked up at the trees. “I don’t know.” His voice sounded broken and unnatural.

  She felt her heart stutter. “Are the Vultures still around?”

  His eyes closed and he grew still. “Well, there’s one,” he said weakly, cracking half a smile as he opened his eyes.

  She glared. His smile faded and he leaned back on his hands, seemingly oblivious to the cold. Nadya was shivering.

  “If this didn’t work … If we just abandoned our friends…” Nadya trailed off, panic snapping at her chest. If she had just left Anna behind at the behest of this monster she was going to kill him. She might just kill him anyway. She didn’t know what was holding her back.

  “Nadya—”

  “No,” she snapped, cutting him off. She stood up, clutching her voryen. She pointed it at him. “Give me a reason not to kill you.”

  “You would be dead if not for me?” he offered, looking up at her, squinting at the glare from the sun off the snow.

  “Not good enough. You would be dead if not for me.”

  He nodded, allowing that. She pressed the tip of her knife underneath his chin, tilting his head back farther.

  “What I just did was heresy,” she said softly.

  “Was it worth it?” he asked, sounding curious.

  Of course it wasn’t wor
th it. Every breath more he spent alive Nadya was disobeying her goddess. They had saved each other but it didn’t mean she should let him live. It was her duty to rid the world of monsters like him. She moved to press the blade against his neck, cut his artery and be done with him. His hand landed over hers, fingers digging into the spaces between hers. His pale blue eyes met her dark brown. He didn’t struggle, instead he bared his throat farther to her blade.

  “You could do a lot with blood like mine,” he murmured. “That’s always the first step, you know. Spilling the blood is the hard part. Using it is easy. Using your blood was enlightening; that’s quite a power you have. It could be greater, if you had mine as well.”

  Revulsion charged through her body and she pulled back. “What are you?”

  Malachiasz shrugged. She watched as he stood, unnerved by how much taller he was than her. Her head only just came to his shoulder. She’d liked it better when he was at her feet.

  He took a step closer; she forced herself to hold her ground. Then his hand—anxious tremors gone—was underneath her chin, directing her gaze up to his. She couldn’t help feeling the chill of iron nails graze her flesh, even as his hand was steady and warm against her cold skin. He studied her face and all feelings of distaste quieted as she studied him in return, trying to piece together what it was that kept staying her hand. His dark tangle of thick hair that he had pushed away from his face was caked with blood and snow and made him look all the more feral. A curiosity she couldn’t quite name took root within her. Here was the very thing she had been taught her entire life was an abomination—and he was very much the worst kind of abomination—but he was also just … a boy.

  A boy whose hand was still on her face. She fought between wanting to wrench away and resting her face against his palm because it was warm and she was so very cold.

  “Nadezhda Lapteva,” he said contemplatively. When he shared his own name, she couldn’t help feeling as if he were pulling her under into some dark depth from which she would never escape. It was a similar feeling now.

  But it was only a feeling.

  “What?” she said irritably, upset with herself for whatever this was, and with him for acting strange after she had just watched him turn into a monster.

  “You could be exactly what these countries need to stop their fighting,” he said. He dropped his hand and she was colder for its absence. “Or you could rip them apart at the seams.”

  11

  SEREFIN

  MELESKI

  Svoyatovi Valentin Rostov: A cleric of Myesta, Rostov infiltrated Tranavia at the beginning of the holy war, utilizing his goddess’s powers of deception. For years, Rostov fed information back to Kalyazin, until a Tranavian prince who suspected him of using magic other than heretical blood magic poisoned him.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  Serefin hated when he had to admit Ostyia was right, but he woke the next morning with a hangover to compete with all others. To her credit, she wordlessly handed him a waterskin as they left and her smile was only slightly sly.

  “How much of a fool did I make of myself last night?” he asked once the inn was out of sight.

  “You promised Felicíja Krywicka the entire western reaches as a wedding gift,” Kacper said.

  Serefin’s eyes narrowed. The prior evening was hazy but he was fairly certain that was a lie.

  “It was fine,” Ostyia said. “You were a little too Serefin at times, but overall, no harm done.”

  “Blood and bone, not my true face,” Serefin said, mock horrified.

  “While you were talking to Felicíja, Krywicki mentioned he was in Grazyk a month ago and was alarmed by how many Vultures were skulking through the palace,” Kacper said.

  Serefin straightened in his saddle. “Did he say anything else?”

  Kacper nodded. “The Vultures are recruiting at a fast pace, as if they’re preparing for something.”

  “We know that Vultures are taken to the Salt Mines when they’re instated,” Ostyia mused. “And we’ve been sending a lot of Kalyazi prisoners there the past few months.”

  Serefin felt a shiver creep up his spine. They were still missing something.

  Sunlight glittered off the deep blue of the lake, nearly blinding Serefin if he looked at it directly. Grazyk was a port city by Lake Hańcza, open to many channels and wide rivers that eventually flowed into the sea.

  Boats floated lazily near the docks. Serefin wondered if anything was ever done about the pirates preying on Tranavian ships as they met the open waters. It had become enough of a problem to garner his father’s attention, but that was before Serefin left. A port city in the middle of the kingdom. Sometimes it felt like Tranavia was more water than land.

  There would be a string of small villages to pass through before they finally reached the city. Those always smelled foul and looked worse, what with the beaten shacks only barely holding together and racks upon racks of fish drying out in the sun.

  Serefin watched a young woman cross the street, two buckets attached to a rod over her shoulders. They were full of water and moving, live fish. Her clothes were tattered, her skirts ragged and dirty at the hem. A small boy ran up to her from where he had been sitting in the doorway of a house with shutters that hung on single hinges. He pulled on one of the buckets, knocking her off balance. She was laughing as she set them down and reached inside, pulling a fish out and showing it to the boy.

  The war was running Tranavia into the ground. Kalyazi villages were in a similar state, but he didn’t care about starving Kalyazi villagers; he cared about starving Tranavians.

  When they were nearly at the city, Ostyia spurred her horse to a gallop to reach the gates first so the guards would be prepared for the High Prince’s arrival.

  “Well,” Serefin said softly, “so it begins.”

  “Cheer up, Serefin,” Kacper said. “It won’t be too bad. You just have to do some groveling and lying and then you can stab your old man in the back and be done with it.”

  Serefin tamped down his paranoia. He shoved it out of his head, pushed his empty spell book into his pack where it wouldn’t be noticed—an empty spell book on a prince was considered disgraceful—and prepared to face his fate.

  * * *

  Grazyk was the most opulent city in Tranavia, built long before the war, when Tranavia was at its peak in wealth, and the fashion was color and light and gold. Serefin didn’t think gold ever went out of fashion, but it was certainly too expensive now to line doorways and molding with golden bricks and gold inlaid wood. A few of those buildings still stood, a testament to when Tranavia was not so poor. Most had been destroyed long ago for the paltry wealth that could be sucked from their foundations.

  There was a cloud of smog that hung over the city. It was an oppression everyone had simply learned to ignore. The fog came from magic experiments gone wrong, filtered up from the ground where there had been mines nearby—not unlike the Salt Mines. While the experiments had been moved to Kyętri, the smog never cleared. It just hung black in the air, a reminder of what happened when mages reached for too much.

  Not that any mage in Tranavia would heed the reminder. Mostly it made the whole city smell like ash. Nobles attempted to counter it by wearing pouches of expensive herbs and spices or dousing themselves in fragrant oils imported from Akola. Neither worked, but nothing would keep slavhki from their outrageous solutions for things that weren’t problems.

  Ostyia had a runner sent to the palace, marking the start of needless formality. Serefin tried to work up the feelings of homesickness he had experienced while out on the front, but now he realized it had been wistful delusion.

  If the city was lavish, the palace was magnificent. It glittered in the distance, a promise of beauty watching over the city and its shameful fog. Spires twisted up into the sky, their hundreds of windows reflecting such a glare that Serefin had to lower his gaze.

  The guards swung open the large wooden gates when they approached. Even those were
hammered with gold. A servant waited in the courtyard to take their horses.

  The courtyard was paved with smooth granite that turned to lush grass just past the front of the palace. It buzzed with a low hum of activity. He could hear the sound of clashing blades from the northern side of the grounds. He braced himself for the inevitable summons from his father. It arrived immediately by way of a servant wearing a plain brown mask that left only his eyes visible. One of his father’s personal servants. The servant bowed to Serefin, who spoke before he could even deliver his message.

  “Yes, yes, my father wishes to see me.”

  The servant nodded. Not being able to see his face was disconcerting. Serefin wasn’t fond of the masks that had been the fashion at court the past few years.

  The style took after the ones worn by the Vultures. The only people who did not wear masks at court were usually the royal family. Serefin loathed wearing anything that might make his vision even worse. His mother was never in Grazyk long enough for it to matter, and the king transcended court trends completely.

  Serefin raked a hand through his hair, then waved to the servant again. “Well? Take me to him. We can’t keep His Majesty waiting.”

  12

  NADEZHDA

  LAPTEVA

  Very little is known about the goddess of the sun. Quiet and eternal, she has never granted her power to any mortal; none know what would happen if she ever did.

  —Codex of the Divine, 3:15

  Nadya and Malachiasz were lost. Apparently direction was not one of his many blood mage talents.

  Nadya wrapped her arms around herself, shivering violently. He glanced back at her before shrugging out of his bloody military jacket. She hesitated, frowning at the symbol of everything she had spent her life fighting against. But her coat had been torn to useless shreds and he didn’t appear to notice the cold so she accepted his offer. The jacket was still warm from his body heat. She tugged the sleeves down to cover her hands.