Mercurial

by Naomi Hughes

  He stopped and touched a hand to the wall, pausing for a moment to take a shallow breath. How many times had he been in this forsaken place, how many times had he begged his god to release him, to let him flee, to let him fight back? And now he’d returned voluntarily, and there was still such little difference he could make. He might as well still be oath-bound. The Alloyed Empire would go on, with a mercurial empress at its head. He had saved her—maybe, possibly, depending on how one viewed the situation—but he had certainly not saved the empire either through her or from her. Only half of the Unforged God’s promise had been true. He wished now that none of it had been.

  Something moved inside him, protesting the lie, but he shut it out ruthlessly.

  He came to the landing. Another guard was there and Tal took him by surprise, sweeping his legs out from under him and then cleanly breaking his neck before he had a chance to draw his sword, or to feel pain. He let the body sag out of his hands and kept moving.

  This level was bright. The floor was plated in platinum, Smithed by the magic of light to give off a harsh glow that threw bizarre shadows across the prisoners’ faces and on the ceiling. The light was more merciless than darkness would be—it gave these people nowhere to hide their despair. Cell after cell was filled with men and women who stared hopelessly at him as he passed, shadows carved into their features, stretching the lines of misery around their mouths into a mockery.

  At the end of the third row, he found the people he was looking for.

  Dark brown hands wrapped around the bars ahead of him. Steely eyes watched him come, as if she had given him an order and he was late in following it. Her short halo of curls was matted and tangled but she still managed to make it look regal.

  “Saasha,” he greeted her.

  “Tal.” Her voice cracked—with pride, he thought, noticing how her eyes changed and shone. He wondered if her plan had extended this far. If, as she was concocting the poison for Nyx, she had imagined that she would end up here and he would rescue her. Or had she considered her own life as forfeit as her daughter’s? Saasha raised her on those gruesome texts of the ancient Saints’ martyrdoms, he remembered Helenia saying, and he realized then that Saasha had expected all of them to die.

  He found he could not quite resent her for it. He had always been willing to sacrifice to save those who needed him, after all. He was not, however, prepared to sacrifice Nyx. For that, he could fault Saasha. He leveled a look at her and saw her recognize the censure in it. The shadows lining her face shifted, painting her expression in unfamiliar lines and ashen hues, and then she spotted his injury and the rust-colored crystals staining it and her expression turned into something complex and unnamable.

  “Does she live?” Saasha asked then, quietly.

  “Nyx is well,” Tal said, taking pity on her.

  “And the Destroyer?”

  “Her too. And,” he added, as if the words were being pulled out of him by her relentless gaze, “she will be crowned soon.”

  Saasha’s lips thinned, and behind her, one of the other Saint prisoners let out a half-muffled wail. “Then we’ve failed.”

  A tumult of footsteps sounded overhead. Distant shouts and cries filtered down as the carnage he’d left behind was discovered.

  Tal lifted the key ring so Saasha could see it. They chimed sweetly, silver against bronze against copper. “Which one?” he asked.

  “Tell me first: where is Nyx? And when will the Destroyer be crowned?”

  Footsteps clattered on the stairs. “It’s not the time for planning more assassinations, Saasha,” he replied, his voice taut.

  “The tin one with the crooked teeth,” she said, nodding at the keys. He set it into the lock and opened the door. The Saints gathered themselves up and hurried into the hall.

  “Go out the south entrance, down this hall and then to the right,” he told them. “The guards there will be distracted right now by…some things happening on the zeppelin landing towers. I’ll distract the guards here long enough for you to get across the southern bridge over the Entengre; there’s a sled and dogs ready to go at the edge of the scorch woodlands there.”

  Saasha was still in the cell. She let go of the bars and backed away, shaking her head, her arms wrapping around herself in a way that made her look uncharacteristically uncertain. “Tell me where my daughter is.”

  The guards’ footsteps were growing closer. He stepped into the cell, hissing a breath out through his teeth, and grabbed her by the shoulder to pull her bodily into the hall. She resisted. “Nyx is probably on her way to the palace right now,” he said, since it was apparently the quickest way to get his stepmother free. “Perhaps half a day behind me if I had to guess, and she will likely come here even though she is supposed to be warning the mountain base of impending attack. As for the Destroyer, I don’t know when her coronation will be, but it’ll be soon. Find Nyx and get out of the city before it happens. Your freedom is my parting gift to her.”

  Saasha bowed her head. “What will you do?”

  “I will get you away from here or die in the attempt. After that…” He hesitated, glanced at the stairs where the first few soldiers were hurrying into the corridor. He hadn’t thought much about what he would do if he lived through this plan. “I will try to find Nyx myself. I want to be with her at the end, if I can.”

  Saasha reached out her arms and folded Tal into a hug. Then, suddenly, she spun around and shoved Tal backwards. Caught off guard, he stumbled. By the time he righted himself she was on the other side of the bars. The cell door shut with a thud and the lock slid closed. She tossed the keys down the hall. They skittered and clinked against the glowing floor plates.

  He stared at her, wordless. She stepped back. “I’m sorry, Tal,” she said, her voice full of the fierce certainty she had always worn, “but the scriptures are clear. Great victory never comes without great sacrifice, and if Nyx is not an exception, you are not either.”

  She turned her back, leaving him locked in the empress’s dungeons with only his ghosts and his god.

  THERE WAS A HOLLOW SPACE AT ELODIE’S BACK. It resonated with the melody of missing footsteps, with the way the air moved differently around her now that no one was in that spot, two feet back and a little to the side, where Tal had always walked. When the guard captain who was escorting her stepped through the space, Elodie turned her head and gave him a look that made him freeze in his tracks without regard to the fact that her eyes were brown and her blood magicless. It didn’t lessen the ache that was creeping through her like frost slipping under a windowsill, but it did give her a momentary satisfaction when the man dropped his eyes and moved up to walk in front of her instead.

  She could send a soldier out to retrieve Tal from the bridge. She had thought about it. He couldn’t have gone far in such a short time, and the palace had many excellent trackers. She could have him hauled bodily to the palace and dragged before Albinus to be cured. But she knew that it would only be one more betrayal to him, and he’d had far more than his share of that already.

  It infuriated her that she had to let him die in order to honor him. It infuriated her that she wanted to honor him, that she wanted to give him a choice and that she cared which choice he would make. He was a weakness. He had always been such, and it had only been sheer luck that none of her enemies had noticed before.

  A whisper broke through her thoughts and she lifted her head. A woman was standing in the arch of a nearby hallway. She was dressed in garishly bright silks that draped all wrong on her bony frame, and paired with a short bald man who draped over her all wrong as well. The woman’s eyes were lit up with malicious glee as she watched Elodie sweep down the corridor. Her name was Countess Ysayle. She was Elodie’s great aunt and utterly unworthy of the moniker, having twice attempted assassination against the Destroyer. Elodie wasn’t sure which made her think less of Ysayle: the fact that she had tried to have her own niece killed, or the fact that she’d failed so embarrassingly to achieve her goal
. Ysayle was currently whispering to the man at her side, both of their gazes glued to Elodie’s face—to her brown eyes, she was certain, until she registered that her cheeks were wet.

  Elodie raised a hand to touch the soft skin below her eyes. She was crying. This place had already wrung tears out of her, and she was only a few hundred steps into it. The tears were as good as blood in the water to the countess, whose smirk widened as she watched the once fearsome Destroyer weep in the halls of her own home.

  Elodie swept the tears off her face with a fingertip and flung them to the plush carpet. “Ysayle,” she called, her voice cold and steady as she intentionally dropped her aunt’s title, “please keep your toys stashed in your rooms and out of sight. It’s unseemly to parade them out in the hall.”

  Ysayle looked confused for a moment until Elodie raised an eyebrow at the man who was draped over her, and then Ysayle’s smirk turned ugly—or uglier, anyway—and angry. Elodie counted one point scored for herself. She couldn’t care less about the string of lovers her great aunt took—it was no one’s business, really, and if she were a man no one would give it a second thought in any case—but it was a quick way to make the point that silver eyes or no, Elodie was not to be mocked. Of course, it was also a quick way to make Ysayle even more of an enemy than she already was, but that was a matter for future Elodie to worry about.

  Future Elodie. She snorted lightly. As if she would somehow know how to successfully navigate the ballrooms and dining halls and audience chambers full of her many enemies if she merely gave herself an extra day or two to figure it out.

  “I am glad you find some amusement in your predicament, sister,” came a voice so charged with emotion it nearly crackled, “because I surely haven’t been able to.”

  Elodie jerked her head up. The empress Sarai strode down the hall, clad in shining armor, glorious golden hair hanging wild over her shoulders, sharp eyes sheened bright with ferocity and joy and, Elodie thought, perhaps grief as she met the now-brown eyes of her little sister.

  Sarai didn’t pause even for a moment. She closed the distance between the two of them and wrapped her whole self around Elodie: a shield against the world, formed by the impenetrable love of a sister. Elodie turned her face against the cold plate metal covering Sarai’s chest and, hidden there from her enemies, allowed her breath to come in the gasping shudder of a girl who wanted very badly to sob.

  At least she had this: her sister, alive. One single person left in this awful place who would never, ever leave her.

  Sarai’s arms tightened around her. She snapped out orders to the soldiers and the handful of nobles surrounding them and then moved so that one arm was still wrapped around Elodie, guiding her further down the hall. The tapestries and sculptures and metallic-paint murals to either side were a blur as they turned east, toward the physicians’ offices. Elodie was so focused on trying to regain her composure that it took her a moment to realize Sarai was moving more stiffly than usual. She glanced over at her sister, having to crane her neck inelegantly to do so at such a close distance, and saw that a woman was walking on her other side with one hand laid on Sarai’s shoulder. It was Tirine, head of the House of Lead, wielder of illusory magics. Elodie’s gaze flicked back to her sister, but Sarai only gave her a cool smile that clearly meant they weren’t going to discuss anything until they were safely ensconced in Albinus’s healing chambers, far from listening ears.

  Sarai stopped at the massive green copper doors of the physicians’ wing, which were currently standing open. “You may leave us here,” the empress said. The soldiers bowed and stepped away. Tirine started to as well, but Sarai laid her fingers atop the hand that was still resting on her shoulder, and Tirine stilled. “May I have the charm before you go, Tirine?”

  Tirine bowed, and with her free hand pulled a palm-sized mirror from her pocket and handed it to the empress. Sarai accepted it and then waved her away.

  The two sisters stepped into the physicians’ wing. This area was bright, full of wide windows and exotic potted plants that filled the air with the heady scent of blossoms, though they weren’t quite strong enough to block out the acrid smell of chemicals and vinegary cleaning solutions. Albinus was bent over next to a succulent plant nearly as tall as he was, carefully clipping off one of its spiny red protrusions with a tiny pair of shears. He straightened when he saw Sarai and set the plant clipping on a wheeled table at his side along with other leaves and bits of flowers, which he must be studying for medicinal uses.

  “Cousins!” he said, his delighted tone at odds with the nervous way his eyes flickered from Sarai’s face to Elodie’s.

  Sarai tilted her head. “I believe you mean, ‘Your Highnesses,’ don’t you, Albinus?”

  He flinched. Elodie didn’t react to this outwardly, but her attention focused more sharply on Albinus, noting the way his fingers twitched and the way he was still holding tightly to the small shears even though he had already set the succulent cutting aside.

  “Of course,” he said smoothly with a bow, one just deep enough to be respectful. His white-blond hair flopped over his forehead and he pushed it away. “Your Highnesses, I am cheered at your presence. Destroyer, I see that the assassin’s foul poison has damaged your eyes and, I assume, your magic. But not to worry, I have already prepared your treatment, and I am pleased to administer—”

  “I shall administer her treatment,” Sarai said, cutting him off.

  Elodie considered whether to say yet that she knew exactly what her “treatment” entailed and wished to refuse it, but reluctance glued the words in place until they could not escape. Once Elodie declared her knowledge and intentions, it would change everything between her and Sarai, and she wasn’t quite ready to do that just yet.

  Albinus swallowed. “But…I may need to infuse it with extra strength, to account for any side effects the poisoning might—”

  Sarai cut him off yet again. “You are dismissed, Albinus.”

  It was a calculated move, to dismiss the royal physician from his own wing of the palace. Elodie expected him to take offense, but he seemed relieved instead, finally setting the shears down and leaving through the copper doors. He tapped a finger against them as he left and they shut silently behind him.

  Elodie turned to her sister. “He seemed tense.”

  Sarai stepped toward a nearby door that led to a smaller side room. “Fearing for one’s life often does that.”

  “Why would he fear for his life?”

  “Because I am considering ending it,” Sarai said, opening the door and waving Elodie in.

  “A good reason for tension,” Elodie allowed. “And as I have never been overly fond of our cousin, I won’t try to dissuade you.” The casual words didn’t come close to expressing the anger she felt when she recalled Tal’s vision and her own matching dream-memories of Albinus standing at her father’s side, offering to fetch a poison to end her life. “But why, exactly, are you thinking of having him assassinated?”

  Sarai stopped walking then and turned back to her sister. Her features were suddenly tight with fury. “I am not thinking of having him assassinated,” she said in a fearsome tone Elodie had heard only a few times before from her. “I am thinking of having him publicly gutted, drawn, quartered, and executed in the central palace courtyard.”

  Elodie shied back a step before she caught herself. Before her stood not her beloved, if intimidating, older sister, but the merciless Iron Empress. Albinus must have done something very terrible indeed to cause a reaction like this, and to make Sarai consider taking such open action against him when he had several powerful allies in the palace. In fact, Elodie could only thing of one thing terrible enough to spur such fury.

  There was a wide cot in the middle of the room. Elodie sat on its edge, making sure she was steady before she said, “He formulated the poison that the Saints used against me, didn’t he?”

  Sarai let out a breath and the fury drained from her expression, coiling back into place deep within her
. “My interrogations have uncovered information that confirms he has been supplying a Saints outpost with the poison for the last two years in anticipation of an attack like the one that was enacted on the train.”

  “So he is a Saint?” Elodie found that very hard to believe. Albinus didn’t believe in anything except himself.

  “No. He is an opportunist, and he wants the throne, and only you and I stand between him and it.”

  Elodie considered this, then took a deep breath and let it out. “That bastard,” she said at last, with great feeling. She wasn’t quite sure what the feeling was, though. Anger, certainly. But fear was there too, a great and dark fear, because this was how she would spend the rest of her life once she refused to allow her sister to carry out the “treatment” that would have turned her back into the Destroyer. How many others would follow in Albinus’s footsteps once they knew she was a powerless misfire?

  “I am sure he is even now scurrying off to meet with some rebel or other in hopes of finishing the job,” Sarai said dryly, “now that you are unprotected. But we shall soon fix that. Come, I’ll get the treatment set up.” Sarai turned to a shelf in the corner that held syringes, other medical equipment, and glass jars full of silvery liquid.

  So they had finally come to it. Elodie pushed the words out before she could reconsider: “You mean, the treatment that will infuse my blood with mercury once again, as it did on the eve of my seventh birthday?”

  Sarai paused, her hand hovering over the glass jar. She turned. “Ah. You remember the truth at last, then.” Her voice was resigned, sad, but unrepentant.

  “Are you going to force a memory tonic on me again?” Elodie half-wished she would; then she might forget Tal, and know she had no hand in the forgetting herself, and therefore be free of both her love of him and the guilt of choosing to forget him. But of course, if Sarai gave her the tonic, she would also forget herself—forget Elodie, the person she could be—and become wholly the Destroyer again. She had been changed by her journey of the last few days and she couldn’t bear for that to dissipate like so much steam in the sunlight. She couldn’t go back to her old cruelty, her old coldness, no matter what other comforts and protections that identity might offer. She wasn’t sure who she was now, but it was someone new—someone she would have to discover for herself.