Blood Heir

by Amélie Wen Zhao

  “This is not negotiable.”

  “One fish in your hand is better than two at—”

  “May’s life is not negotiable!” Her voice rose to a scream.

  Silence fell. Shadows danced across Ramson’s face; the flames reflected in his eyes, which were narrowed. “You need to decide,” he said at last. “What do you want?”

  “To right my wrongs. What do you want?”

  “I told you. Revenge.”

  “Revenge against whom?” Ana leaned closer, refusing to let go of his gaze. To his credit, Ramson didn’t look away. “Why were those mercenaries bringing you to Kerlan?”

  Ramson matched her stance. They glared at each other across the fire, the heat coiling around them like a living thing, embers flickering between them. “I botched a job for him. Broke a Trade. Now you see the implications?” At her silence, he sighed and stood. “Kerlan knows everything that goes on in his territory. If you try to save May, you risk losing your alchemist. Think about that.” He paused on his way out. “And, Ana, remember this. You’re not a Deity. You’re not the Emperor. You can’t save everybody. So think about what’s best for yourself.”

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “To cleanse my soul.”

  She watched his retreating back and suddenly wished he hadn’t left. Silence pressed in, and it was as though the entire temple, with its walls of stone figures, watched her.

  Ana ran her eyes over the wall carvings. The figures might once have been gilded in gold and silver and lapis lazuli and emerald, but those had long been pillaged by thieves as the temple fell to abandonment. Still, it was beautiful. Reverential.

  As always, she shrank back beneath the Deities’ watchful gazes, all too aware of what she was. Monster. Witch. Deimhov. She heard the screams from that day long ago in the Salskoff Winter Market as she sat paralyzed in all that blood, affirming to the world that she was the demon everyone believed she was.

  Yet another part of her—a small part—leaned forward, yearning for the light and rightness and goodness. It was the small flame of hope that her aunt had lit in her chest all those years back, with a single sentence.

  It had been in a temple just like this, the moon weeping above snow-covered grounds and casting a cold light over Mama’s new tomb. She’d been eight years old. Ana knelt beneath the statues of the four Deities, their expressions stern and ungiving. She traced her fingers over the marble, carved in the exact features of her mother’s face, long eyelashes that cast half-moon shadows over high cheekbones, and vibrant curls that had always seemed so full of life. The only thing the marble did not capture, Ana thought as she stroked the small crook between Mama’s nose and cheeks, was the rich fawn of her mother’s skin when she had been alive; the healthy glow to her smile that seemed to light the world.

  Ana’s fingers drew the same patterns over and over on the marble’s cold white face, mingling with her tears.

  It had only been one moon, yet with Mama’s absence, the winter that swept over Salskoff that year was cold and stark, the snows harsh and unforgiving.

  “Why?” Ana’s whisper had lingered in the air between her and the marble Deities, small and forlorn. “Why did you take her?”

  Stubbornly, they remained quiet. Perhaps it was true that the Deities did not listen to an Affinite’s prayers.

  A warm hand slid over her shoulders, and Ana jumped. Instinctively, she swept a hand over her face to clear it of tears before turning around.

  The Grand Countess’s quiet eyes, the color of pale tea, met hers. It was a few moments before Morganya spoke. “Your mother meant the world to me,” she whispered, and Ana had no doubt that was true. It was Mama who had found Morganya all those years ago in a village, her body battered from the torturers who had kidnapped her from her orphanage and beaten her. Mama had brought Morganya to the Palace, and they’d grown closer than sisters.

  “Have your prayers worked?” Even after all those years, Morganya’s voice had not lost the quiet, cautious timbre of the downtrodden.

  Ana hesitated. “I’m not…They don’t…I don’t think…”

  “You don’t think they listen to Affinites’ prayers.” The words were uttered softly, but they cut deeper than any blade. Ana bowed her head, shame filling the silence.

  Morganya tucked Ana’s hair behind her ear in a way that reminded her so much of Mama that she wanted to cry. “I’ll tell you a secret,” the Countess continued. “They’ve never answered mine, either.”

  “But you’re—” You’re not an Affinite.

  Morganya gripped Ana’s chin and lifted Ana’s face to meet her eyes. “There is no difference between you and me, Anastacya,” she said softly. “The Deities have long sent me a message through their silence.” A steely glow sharpened Morganya’s gaze. “It is not their duty to grant us goodness in this world, Kolst Pryntsessa. No, Little Tigress—it is up to us to fight our battles.”

  Her aunt’s use of Mama’s nickname for her brought fresh tears to her eyes. But she spoke past the aching knot in her throat. “It’s up to us to fight our battles,” she repeated, her voice tiny but a little firmer.

  Morganya nodded. “Remember that. Anything you want, you have to take it for yourself. And you, Kolst Pryntsessa, were chosen by the Deities to fight the battles that they cannot in this world.”

  It had been difficult to understand her mamika’s words back then. Confined to the two windows of her chambers and the four walls of her Palace, she had found it hard to fathom that she had the choice to fight any battles at all, let alone imagine that the Deities had marked her.

  But perhaps her aunt had been right, Ana now realized as she sat beneath the cool, moonlit gaze of the same silent Deities. The Deities had never answered her prayers—but perhaps all those years of silence were a message. It is up to us to fight our battles in this world.

  Her eyes landed on the carving of a young child sitting in a field. Petals whirled around her in a phantom wind, and her eyes were crinkled with laughter. The first time Ana had woken up in that empty barn, May had crouched in the snow outside, nursing a small flower back to life. Ana thought of when she had followed May back to her employer’s house; of the woman’s spiteful words and sharp hands.

  She thought of the broker back at Kyrov, of his cold eyes and pale hair. Of the Imperial Patrols, cloaks billowing the bright whites and blues of Cyrilia, tiger insignia roaring proudly on their chests.

  Of the yaeger crouched before her in defeat, hunter turned victim.

  Of May staggering, eyes wide with surprise, as the arrow hit her. Of the blackstone wagon doors swinging shut.

  How had the Empire fallen to this? The Cyrilian Empire Ana had always held so fiercely and faithfully in her heart was as proud and as strong as its white tiger sigil, its laws unimpeachable and its rulers benevolent. Yet what she had witnessed the past few days told her otherwise. Sinister shadows had sprung up in the spaces between laws, preying on those without the protection of status or wealth.

  Or had it always been like this? Ice crawled up her veins, and Ana thought of how quickly mamika Morganya had been dismissed the time she had brought up Affinite indenturement. Of the way the Palace courtiers had whispered about Mama’s Southern Cyrilian origins. Of how Ana had been deemed a monster solely because of her Affinity.

  Perhaps, Ana thought, the world had never been fair. She had only noticed too late.

  But her mamika was right.

  If there was to be fairness in this world, it wasn’t to be granted by the Deities. And it started one step at a time.

  By the time Ramson’s footsteps sounded down the hallway, Ana had made up her mind. “We’re going after May,” she said quietly as he strolled into view, clutching two rolls of bread wrapped in a handkerchief.

  Ramson sat down across from her and set the rolls on his lap. “You sound convi
nced.” He tilted his head back and waved at the wall carvings around them. “Let me guess: being the devout dama that you are, you probably prayed to the Deities—and of course, they advised you to do the right thing, and not the expedient, selfish thing.”

  “The Deities don’t answer my prayers,” she replied.

  Ramson gave her a crooked smile. “That makes two of us.”

  Ana reached forward and snatched a roll. The bread was cold and hard, but she tore through it in several bites. “Why don’t the Deities like you? What’s wrong with you?” It felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from her chest; whereas before, she would have shied away from such a daring topic of conversation, now the words flowed easily from her.

  Ramson snorted. “What’s wrong with me?” he repeated, ripping off a chunk of his bread. “Is that a rhetorical question? Let’s see.” Ramson scratched his chin, faking a look of concentration as he began to tick off his fingers. “Youngest crime lord of the Empire, selfish, calculating, backstabbing, oh, and let’s not forget, sinfully handsome—need I go on?”

  “Do you ever answer anything seriously?”

  “I answer everything seriously.”

  Ana rolled her eyes and swallowed her last bite of bread. Her stomach gave a gurgle of hunger, but her thoughts turned to May. Had she eaten yet? Was she cold? “I want to leave as soon as the sun rises.”

  Ramson nodded. “Good idea.” An unspoken, disconcerting thought flitted between them: The Syvern Taiga was where the most dangerous creatures in Cyrilia roamed at night. Ana had heard of ruskaly lights leading tired travelers astray, of giant moonbears thrice the height of a normal human, of icewolf spirits that sprang from nothing but the snow.

  “It took us one full day to reach Kyrov from Ghost Falls,” she mused aloud. “Novo Mynsk is almost ten times as far.”

  “We have a valkryf,” Ramson noted. “By my calculation, it’ll take us a bit over five days. That gives us four days before the Fyrva’snezh to save May, get our names on Kerlan’s guest list, and find your alchemist.” He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “We’re working with very slim chances here.”

  “You’re the most infamous con man of Cyrilia,” Ana replied drily. “Slim chances are your friends. You’ll make it work.”

  “I don’t have any friends. And if Kerlan happens to learn of our Grand Theft Affinite, I’m blaming you. I’m not letting him kill me because of your righteousness.”

  “I might very well kill you first.” Ana watched him pick his way over to the pile of logs. “Ramson?”

  “Yes?”

  She hesitated, and then the words left her in a rush. “What’s his name? The alchemist. You said you had his real name.”

  For a moment, she almost expected him to bring up the Trade, tell her that it was a piece of information she would need to bargain for. But Ramson only looked at her and said quietly, “Pyetr Tetsyev.”

  Pyetr Tetsyev. She tasted the name on her tongue as she closed her eyes. Pyetr Tetsyev. It didn’t sound like an evil name; it could have belonged to anyone—a scholar, a professor, a man she might have met on the corner of a street.

  Pyetr Tetsyev. The Palace alchemist existed. She hadn’t spent the past year chasing after a phantom; he was real. And he was close. The missing piece to her father’s murder was less than a week’s travel away.

  And she repeated his name over and over again until she fell asleep: a chant of prayer, a vow for vengeance.

  Unlike the open oceans and rain-slogged moors of Ramson’s childhood, Cyrilia was a land frozen in perpetual winter. The forest held its eternal silence, silver dusting the branches of tall pines and occasional stretches of white snow in areas where nobody else had traveled before. His breath curled in plumes, and the crisp coldness of the air kept him alert as he steered the valkryf forward, the Affinite sitting uncomfortably close to him. Above, the misty gray skies promised snow very, very soon.

  They had spent the first day of their travels hashing out their plan. He had told her the details of the Playpen, of Kerlan’s estate and his ball—not all of them, of course, but the ones she needed to know—and they had finally, finally, after hours of persistent questioning and arguing from the stubborn girl, come to an agreement.

  They set up camp the second night in an abandoned dacha at the edge of a small town named Vetzk. After ensuring that the curtains were drawn, Ramson started a fire and settled down to treat his wounds. The witch sat across from him. Curled up with her knees against her chest, she looked smaller, more vulnerable. Almost like the young girl she was.

  Ramson knew she was anything but. He’d meant to ask her about her Affinity after that fight in the rain, after he’d seen that mercenary who’d been bled dry. Throughout his years working with Kerlan, he’d thought he’d witnessed everything—monstrosities, Affinities strange and twisted—but that dead mercenary had been something else altogether. Something of nightmares.

  “I never thanked you for saving me,” he said, breaking the silence.

  She started, blinking as though emerging from a trance. For once, the defensiveness was gone from her expression. She dipped her chin in a regal gesture. “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re the most powerful Affinite I’ve seen,” he said. “What, exactly, is your Affinity?”

  He could see the guard going up in her eyes, the way her face closed off as though preparing for a fight. “Flesh.”

  It had been a clever lie—and she’d fooled him at first. The effects of the two could almost be interchangeable. Flesh Affinites, though potentially powerful, were seen apprenticed to butchers or the like. An Affinity to blood, on the other hand—well, the Blood Witch of Salskoff was the only rumored blood Affinite to have been known. Ramson pushed on. “Is that how you bled that mercenary dry? With your flesh Affinity?”

  Her lips tightened.

  “There’s a story,” Ramson continued, “of an Affinite who showed up in Salskoff around ten years ago.” Her eyes glittered in the firelight, but she betrayed nothing. “She killed eight people with a single thought.

  “They named her the Blood Witch of Salskoff. She was never seen again; her particular way of killing, of bleeding her victims dry, was unheard of for a long time.” The fire crackled between them. He was walking a tightrope; a single misstep could send him plunging. Ramson chose his words carefully. “I always thought I’d have liked to meet her.”

  Something shifted in her gaze—suspicion, or surprise—and she looked away. “Why?”

  He almost loosed a breath. “So that I could understand her. Ask her why she did it.”

  “She never meant to.” Her voice was soft as a sigh, and as she gazed into the flames, her face was a well of sadness. “She never meant to hurt anybody.”

  The confession was unexpected, and struck a chord deep within him, one he’d kept buried beneath the great legend of Ramson Quicktongue he’d built for himself over the years. He knew, bone-deep, the feeling of hurting someone and being helpless to do anything about it.

  And the ones you hurt tended to be the ones closest to you.

  * * *

  —

  Ramson had been seven when he met Jonah Fisher, on the first day of their military training. He’d sized up the gangly, dark-haired boy who looked as though he’d been stretched from a shadow, stalking down the stone halls with a steady, slouched gait. When they announced his name, a titter ran through the boys and girls. Fisher wasn’t a real last name; Fisher was a last name they stuck on Bregonian boys from the orphanages of Sapphire Port.

  And it struck close to home.

  Ramson himself had been close to inheriting that name. It had something to do with his mother not being properly married to his father, he’d gathered. But while some children like Ramson were never seen again, Ramson’s father, Admiral Roran Farrald, the second most powerful man of the Kingdom of Bregon, had
instead plucked Ramson from the small town of Elmford where his mother resided and elected him for placement at the Blue Fort, Bregon’s elite military school. Only the most capable were selected, Affinites among them, and Ramson took this as a gesture of trust. He vowed he would never disappoint the father who remained as distant as the moon in the night sky, monochrome light cold and bright.

  But children were the most perceptive of creatures, and the underhanded slights Ramson had received for most of his life were not lost on him. Neither were the whispers of bastard and packsaddle son.

  The jeers of his new classmates struck a quiver of fear within him, and he joined them, making his taunts the nastiest and his voice the loudest among them.

  Jonah Fisher paused. He looked around, expression bored, as though he’d rather be anywhere but there. “You got nothing better to do or what?” he asked.

  The class burst into laughter, Ramson included. He’d heard people speak with Jonah Fisher’s accent before, down at the fish markets and out in the poorest outskirts of Sapphire Port. Ramson was a city-bred boy, and his father had paid for his tutoring since he’d turned five. He prided himself on being the quickest thinker and fastest talker of his class.

  A crack rang through the hall. It echoed and reverberated as utter silence fell.

  Jonah Fisher held a sparring rod from the racks at the side of the training hall. He stood before the class, still wearing that uninterested expression. “All of you better walk your talk.” His voice was calm, but an undercurrent of threat ran through his words. “Show you know how to really fight. Go on,” he goaded, to the dead stillness of the children.

  Ramson looked around. The trainer had stepped away; there were no adults nearby. Just a class of several dozen children who would one day become Bregon’s elite marines. Who would fight for the top rank in his father’s navy.

  Packsaddle son.

  He’d show them. He’d show them all that he was no Fisher, no bastard, no throwaway shunned by his own father. He was Admiral Roran Farrald’s son.