by Sam Hawke
I considered the geography with a sinking dread. The explosion had come from my family estates. My heart beat fast, and it hurt to take a breath. “By the time we got there, they’d be long gone.” Honor-down, I felt like the coldest bastard to say it. “There’ll be people closer than us who can help.” If there’s anyone left to help.
She gave me a sympathetic look. “Keep on then,” she said, without judgment.
Silasta was upriver, which meant having to ride until the nearest town to hire a boat and crew. Many of the scant and scared population had already fled to Telasa or Silasta when they’d seen the blast. Rumors abounded; there had been three great blasts, we were told, the other two northwest and southwest. Other estates, I guessed. And then on to the capital?
Birds had passed overhead, north to Telasa. “They’ll be sending for the regiments from the border cities,” I reasoned. “Our enemy must know we’ll do that. They won’t wait around to be penned in.” I looked hopelessly up the river. It had taken us valuable hours to find a boat and willing crew, and we were more than a day away from Silasta even in favorable conditions. Almost everyone I loved in the world was there, being marched on by monsters carrying the stolen power of our spirits. “Fuck!” I kicked the nearest stone as hard as I could, the pain in my toes a momentary blessed distraction. An elderly man gave me a startled and disapproving look.
“We will be too late,” Hadrea said quietly.
“Yes,” I hissed. “You’re probably the only person with a chance of stopping them, and we’re too fucking far away.”
Hadrea looked at the position of the sun, her expression thoughtful rather than upset. “The Maiso will begin soon,” she murmured.
“Yes, thanks, that’s very informative,” I grunted.
“Jovan,” she said patiently. “The Maiso is very powerful.”
“Yes, I know. One more thing that’ll make our journey harder.”
But Hadrea had stopped listening. She shook loose her scarf, cracked her neck, and sat down.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Be quiet, Jovan,” she said calmly, closing her eyes. “I am about to ask a boon.”
* * *
Darkness fell as we slipped through the water, our passage too smooth and free for a boat traveling upriver, aided by unnatural forces. There was something utterly eerie about the redirected wind. The Maiso had always seemed to have a personality—a capricious one, at times—so it took no real stretch to attribute it to a mighty spirit. And yet the wind’s assistance unsettled me more than its opposition. Life was more comfortable when nature was an indifferent and unrelatable feature of the world, with no fragile and confusing connections to humans. Certainly our crew thought so, judging by the fearful glances they shot Hadrea when they thought she wasn’t looking.
I took heart from the silence, and when the white city walls took gradual form in the distance, they stood still and unbroken. The outer village lay in darkness, perhaps evacuated. Hadrea, tired from communion with the Maiso spirit, lay back in the boat while I stared ahead, assessing.
Close to the city, we abandoned the boat, cautious despite the dark. Our thoroughly spooked crew left us by the side of the river and promptly turned downriver without a backward glance.
“Well, the walls are certainly active,” I muttered as we approached. “Do you think—”
The night burst into life.
A faint whoosh preceded three heavy collision noises as something crashed into the ground to the west of the river. Bright streaks followed; flaming arrows from the walls, a rain of fire. Their landing triggered several bigger bursts of flame, illuminating a ring of half a dozen shouting people who must have been camped there.
More shouts, and the pounding of approaching troops. A dark mass swarmed toward the camp from the other side; our army, I guessed, coming round from the west gate.
Hadrea tugged at my hand, but I stopped. A flicker of light from the river itself had caught my eye.
“What’s that?”
Hadrea gestured to the camp. “We should help! Jovan, what are you doing?”
But I’d seen the glint of light again. “That’s the sewer drain.” If the city were locked up, shut down against a magical foe, the sewers might be one of the few ways to get past our walls undetected. Either someone was trying to get out of the city, or someone was trying to get in.
* * *
Hadrea pried open the grate and we crept into the tunnel. Water sloshed cold and sludgy, halfway up my shins. Someone had blocked the flow from the inside. The light I’d glimpsed reflecting off the water now gave off a steady glow, held by someone just out of sight around the curve of the tunnel.
“… not you.”
I recognized my sister’s voice in an instant, and my heart leapt; I almost called out, but Hadrea put a cautious hand on my chest.
“You don’t know me.” I knew that one too, and it made my blood chill. Erel sounded … not confident, precisely, but not frightened, either. “You never did. I’ve never been one of you.” The sound of someone spitting. “You’re all disgusting. Sinners. Traitors.”
“That’s what he told you.” Oh, fortunes. Tain, too. What were the three of them doing down here? I tried to picture the dynamic, the possible layout. “If you wanted to kill me you could have done it a thousand times. Why now?”
“What good would killing you do? Someone else would just take your place. It isn’t revenge if the whole city doesn’t bow down to—Don’t move!” Higher, that time. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Erel, you don’t want to hurt me.” Kalina sounded so calm. Calmer than me, for sure. Hadrea and I looked at each other in the dark. “Whatever you were taught as a child, you’ve lived here half your life and you know we’re not thieves or traitors or murderers.”
“You’re not those things, either,” Tain said. “I made you my page because I trusted you. You’re a good person, Erel.”
“I am a good person,” he retorted. “I am a good and loyal son. My father the Prince prepared me for this my whole life. Twenty years of planning to destroy you and everything your country stands for.” He laughed, a little breathlessly. “Everything you’ve done in the last two years, he knows, because I’ve told him. Every letter you penned, every report you signed, every recommendation your Council made, came through my hands. I knew how much your stupid, blasphemous carnival meant to you, that it was the perfect way to humiliate and defeat you. I knew where your people would be, and where they wouldn’t be. I knew the man most of the city thinks is your lover is your poison taster. Oh, yes, Credola Kalina, I know about your family. I’m not stupid. You let your guard down in front of children because you don’t take them seriously. You, of all people, when you’ve been teaching your niece to be just like you!”
“If you hurt a hair on Dee’s head, Jovan will find you, and he will tear. You. Apart.” Tain’s words, through gritted teeth, channeled the sudden burst of rage inside me.
“I wouldn’t hurt Dee.” A bruised tone to his voice. “She’s just a kid. She didn’t choose to be raised in this place.”
“You’re just a kid, Erel.”
“I’ve never been just a kid. You were lucky with the siege. My father thought I was too young then. If I’d been in charge instead of that woman—”
Kalina sounded incredulous, but still gentle, still patient, when she replied. “Erel, you were thirteen years old. You wanted to be in charge of a rebellion?” She broke off with a sharp intake of breath, and I clenched my fists, agonizing indecision lancing me. Erel must have a weapon on her, but we couldn’t see who was where so we couldn’t risk storming around the corner. “What happens now, Erel?” she continued after a moment. “There’s two of us and one of you.”
“I’m the one with the knife at your throat.”
“But what are you going to do with it? I know you don’t want to kill me. And if you do, you think you can overpower Tain? A grown man?”
“That weakling?” He snort
ed. “You don’t pay attention to anything, do you? My father’s lucky he’s made it this far, judging from all those secret visits from the physic. Father wants him alive when he tears his heart out, and it would have been disappointing if he’d dropped dead. I’m going to deliver him and neither of you can stop me.”
In the silence that followed, my ears rang with the pressure of suspicions I had spent months pushing away. My heart beat so loud in my ears, I was sure the trio around the bend would hear me. I glanced at Hadrea, who was scrutinizing the tunnel, her slight frown visible in the faint light.
“Your father,” Tain said. “That Prince out there? The one who dumped you on a road when you were seven? That ‘father’?”
“He did not dump me,” the boy retorted. “He trusted me with a mission.”
“What kind of mission is that to give to a little boy?” Kalina asked quietly. “To ingratiate himself with a family—a family who gave him their name, and a home, and love, and support—and then use them to get close to Tain? And we also loved and cared for you. Tain treats you like his own family, Erel. What kind of ‘father’ asks a boy to betray people who’ve offered him nothing but kindness?”
“What’s the love of sinners worth? Less than nothing.” But they had the ring of repeated words, a phrase to remind a little boy not to care for the people who cared for him, and Erel delivered them without conviction. A tiny bead of hope formed inside me. Erel had been indoctrinated, fed a diet of propaganda, and put in a terrible position. But he wasn’t at heart an evil person. He had only wanted the approval and affection of his parent. He did care about Tain. He could be talked down.
“He has to be delivered to my father,” Erel said. “But you don’t have to die, Kalina. My father the Prince must punish the three Families, but women don’t matter to him, because they don’t matter to God. Women take all kinds of airs here, but that is not what God says a woman is for.”
“What does God say a woman is for, Erel?” Honor-down, she was still so calm. How had I ever doubted her bravery?
Erel, by contrast, grew more agitated with each answer he gave. “God chose women to bear life and magic, but they are just a vessel. God does not mean for women to wield power except in His honor and the service of His chosen leaders.”
“That’s what the book says,” Kalina said. “But you’re a spy, Erel, which means you’re observant, so you can’t be foolish enough to think half the population exist as a vessel for anything. They’re people, same as you. Good and bad and screwed up and happy and everything in between.”
“That isn’t what God teaches.” But there had been the tiniest hesitation before his answer. A chink in whatever armor this Prince had built around a small boy to make him believe. “God says women can be cunning but never wise. My father has used cunning and ambitious women to do his bidding against Sjona, so you of all people should know they should not be trusted with power.”
There was a sloshing of someone taking a step, and Erel shouted, “Stay back!”
My heart sank. I’d been listening carefully and that last made me certain Tain was closer to us, with Erel and Kalina on the far side, giving us no chance to sneak up behind the boy.
“So is it God or your father who wants us all dead?” Tain asked. His tone was as gentle as Kalina’s, inquisitive rather than aggressive.
“Sjona is an affront to God, and my father is the man who will finally take revenge in His name,” Erel replied, again with the air of rote learning. “He will be declared the next rightful Emperor.”
“Why did it take God hundreds of years to get revenge on our families?” Tain asked. “If he’s so powerful. Why now?”
“Because you stole our link to Him!” he blurted out, a definite edge of hysteria in his voice now. “Your ancestors! They tricked their way into the Palace of the Emperor and found the Holy Vessels, the source of the Emperor’s connection to God. They stole what they could and destroyed the rest, and fled here to this cursed place. And they gave it to others, and used it against Crede, to seal us away from the rest of the world so we could slowly stagnate and perish!”
Hadrea stiffened beside me, but Tain’s voice was even. “Erel. Those are words someone else has taught you. A story. You’ve seen firsthand what can happen if people accept uncritically what a society says about its own history. How can you be sure this isn’t just some revenge story passed down over the years? What Holy Vessels? Do you really think a few score refugees carried old artifacts across the Howling Plains?”
The boy spat. “The Holy Vessels, Chancellor. The connection to God. Not artifacts. People. Your ancestors found them and they poisoned them all.”
A beat of silence followed that bizarre pronouncement, then there was a sudden heavy splash. A body dropping? Without hesitation or warning Hadrea sprang into motion; I followed clumsily and was met with a flurry of sloshing water, moving shapes and shadows in the poor and flickering light. I had a moment to identify Kalina on the ground on her side, and the other two wrestling for control of a long knife. Hadrea leapt into the fray, seizing Erel’s wrist, and I grabbed the boy from behind, but he fought like a wild animal, clawing and biting, wickedly strong. The lantern shattered, leaving us surrounded by blackness and foul water and flailing bodies. Someone or something struck me in the jaw and I fell back, my head ringing.
A light flared into the gloom. Hadrea held a flame aloft in one bare hand, revealing the muddy figures of Erel and Tain, the former with one arm wrapped tightly around Tain’s neck and a glinting blade in the other hand.
“Don’t use your stolen magics on me,” he hissed, “or I’ll cut his throat right now.” His eyes found me in the dark. “Credo Jovan, too? My father will be pleased with me. He’ll take both your hearts and he won’t even have to break down your walls.” I realized my hands were empty, my knife lost somewhere in the sewage during the scuffle.
“Don’t do anything, Hadrea,” I said. No matter how fast she was, he could cut Tain’s throat faster. My breath screamed in my lungs; I felt paralyzed by indecision. Kalina was slumped at Tain’s feet but it was too dark to tell how badly she was hurt. Had Erel cut her throat? Hadrea lowered her flame, and light flickered over my sister. No visible blood, but she wasn’t moving. Erel stared at Hadrea, seemingly transfixed, and temporarily paying no attention to me. I crept my hand slowly, gently, toward my concealed pouches. In the dark and wet and muck powders were of no use, but one item in there was capable of covering distance.
Erel’s voice, when he spoke, shook, and I was shocked to see tears glinting on his cheeks. “You killed my mother,” he whispered, hoarse with loss and fear and hatred, and my breath released with a sudden snick of understanding. He was only a boy, after all, raised as a tool and used as a weapon, promised affection and glory and restoration to his rightful place, and above all, the promise of a mother. Realization dawned on Hadrea’s face, too, and pity.
“An-Aralina,” she said heavily. “Erel, I had no choice. She might not have had a choice, either. Your father—”
But Erel wasn’t listening. His face twisted into fury, and pain, and desperation, and I knew it was no good, he was never going to listen or surrender, not to the woman who had incinerated his mother before his eyes.
He was just a child.
What kind of man was I, that I would do this? What kind of man would not do this?
I felt cold to the core as I raised the tiny pipe to my mouth, concealed by my fingers. This was, of course, the kind of man I was. You never get used to poisoning a child, not even a child like this one. But I could still do it. I’m sorry, I thought, honestly. I aimed the dart, and blew.
I didn’t see it land because there was a sudden deep boom and force rippled through the tunnel, jolting us all. As Erel fumbled for balance, suddenly Kalina exploded into action, yanking Erel’s knife hand down, and Hadrea’s light bobbed wildly as she sprang forward into what was, momentarily, another terrifying scuffle in the dark. But then the light brightened and Kalina stood
, triumphant, foot on Erel’s back, prying the knife from his fingers.
“Got him!” she cried, and she and Tain pulled the boy up to yank his hands behind his back.
It was a long and confused moment before they both realized something was wrong. Horror dawned across their faces as Erel slumped, muscles twitching, eyes rolling, needle dart protruding from his neck. The effect of the laceleaf distillation was immediate. The boy’s mouth moved but the poison was constricting his throat and no sound came out.
“Do something, Jov!” Tain yelled. “He’s just a kid, do something!”
“I can’t,” I said woodenly, as my gut seized in regret. If I had held off one more moment until Kalina had acted … “There’s nothing to be done.”
We stood there silently, under the cold and invisible specter of my actions, and I felt old and tired and monstrous.
But a war was going on, and we could ill afford to dwell on my mistakes. “Where’s Dee?” I asked.
“With Sjease and the others.” Kalina looked dazed, sickened. “They’re hiding in the jail.” She squeezed my hand. “Jov, you did what you had to to save Tain.”
“He was fifteen.”
“Fifteen and he did not hesitate to murder,” Hadrea observed. “Are your guards dead, Tain?”
Tain blinked. He looked like a man who’d been struck across the face with a pan. But he shook himself, spurred into action by worry, and the three of us followed as he sloshed back up the tunnel. “Just unconscious,” he called out, relieved. “He gave them something to drink before we left. Something to warm them up. I didn’t take any.” He looked up at me as he stood, then quickly looked away again. “Jov trained me a bit too well.”
“We cannot leave these people here.” Hadrea squatted by one of the blackstripes. “They could drown.”
We looked at one another. Tain looked up the tunnel. In the distance, the noises of a fight raged. “The element of surprise is gone, Tain,” Kalina said quietly. “If we ever had it. Given who proposed the plan, the Prince probably expected you to turn up.”