Mercurial

by Naomi Hughes

  Her fury rose. She twitched a finger and a noose of fire curled around the neck of the soldier who’d kicked Tal. She ought to end his life.

  No. She ought to end this whole travesty of a trial.

  But then what would she do? She let her eyes lift to the audience. Cobalt-and-rust pendants fluttered in the breeze and metallic bunting hung between the towering trees like moss. The whole garden turned on a strange air, something between celebratory and hungry. A large portion of the city had turned out for the event, perhaps nearly a thousand people who were shaken by the empress’s death, eager to evaluate their new ruler, and of course morbidly eager for the spilled blood of the accused as they always were.

  The Destroyer was the sole judge in these proceedings. She could ensure that Tal’s blood didn’t spill. She could proclaim him innocent, or upend the law regarding silver Smiths. But making such a move to protect her bodyguard on the very first day of her reign would mean giving her enemies an immeasurable amount of leverage…and then Tal would die anyway.

  She remembered how he’d looked when he’d woken her this morning: tousled hair, unnaturally bright eyes, cheeks flushed with fever. He had perhaps a few days left to live, each more painful than the last as his heart struggled to circulate blood clotted with tiny crystals, as the phage shredded his veins and vital organs. She wasn’t sure she could bear watching him go through that.

  We were made to withstand such things, he’d said last night. But she wasn’t built the same as him. She could withstand so much less than he could. Her whole self was so much less than he was, and that frightened her as much as anything ever had.

  A strangled whimper pulled her thoughts back to the soldier before her. The noose was burning through the skin on his neck, making a horrible sizzling sound. Tal was looking at her over his shoulder. His eyes were grave. In her mind she heard again what he’d said last night: the more time that goes by the more it will overtake you.

  She set her jaw. It would not overtake her. She released the rope of fire and it fizzed out. She itched to call it back the moment it dissipated, to let it curl reassuringly in her hands, the way a guard might grip a sword hilt to settle himself before a fight.

  The soldier gasped gratefully, hands over his neck, a thin black line burnt into his skin. He stumbled to his post at the edge of the stage. The light breeze of the day strengthened and became brisk, and the trees shivered harder than ever, flinging their leaves across the stage like offerings.

  The Destroyer gazed down at the audience again. They were silent, their eyes wide at the display of her power. Pleasure flared within her. She turned and paced slowly to her small throne a few steps away and sat.

  “Let us begin,” she called out.

  Nyx thought nothing could shatter her self-made cocoon of determination. She’d been wrong; Tal could.

  The sight of her brother stole every thought in her mind. Her seat was close to the front—she’d made menacing gestures at the man who had claimed the spot until he gave it over—and she could easily see from here just how ill Tal looked. He was afraid, too, though he tried to hide it as he always did. Hang on, little brother, she told him mentally. As if he could hear her, his gaze lifted to scan the audience but didn’t find her.

  A man strode to the front. Pale skin, watery eyes, floppy hair: Albinus, the royal physician and would-be emperor. He spoke. “As this boy served in the palace at the side of the new empress, long may she live, and her late sister, I thought his case merited someone in a high position to bring the accusations against him,” he said smoothly. The garden tried to swallow up his words, the unnaturally neat rows of bushes and flower plots absorbing much of his volume. The audience rustled as the people further back asked those in front of them what had been said.

  Time to move. While those around her were distracted, Nyx bent down as if to scratch an itch and pulled the arrowhead out of her shoe. She twirled the stick in her hand and attached one to the other. Everyone was watching the Destroyer. Everyone was shifting uneasily, wondering if it had truly been wise for them to come here to see the volatile new Mercurial Empress on the first day of her reign. Whatever she did today would set a precedent, would set the tone for the length of her rule. They worried she would be cruel.

  They wouldn’t have to worry much longer.

  Nyx dropped the arrow on the ground and reached for her flask. She lifted it as if to drink, then fumbled it, splashing its purple contents at her feet. She grumbled for the benefit of anyone who was paying any attention to her and put the flask away again. On the ground beneath her, the metal tip of the arrow shone violet with poison.

  The Destroyer smiled at Albinus, making an effort to look sincere when he turned around to beam that smug expression of his in her direction. He saw her face and looked for a moment like a cat who’d been unexpectedly dunked in a bath: startled, affronted, and not quite sure what was happening.

  Taking advantage of his disorientation, the Destroyer rose from her throne. “Thank you, dear cousin,” she said, every word a threat. “I will hear the accusations now.”

  Albinus skulked across the stage to stand in the traditional spot of the accuser. Power thrilled in the Destroyer’s veins at her minor victory in putting him off-balance. Perhaps she could still find a way to pull this off after all. She could not bear to watch Tal die slowly of the rust phage, but neither would she allow him to be humiliated and slandered before her subjects. And never, never, would she end him with her own fire.

  Which meant she had to find some believable reason to proclaim him innocent.

  “The accusations are thus,” Albinus said, raising his voice as the breeze strengthened again. “The boy is a silver Smith.”

  Gasps rippled through the audience. They had known who was on trial today, but the charges had not been made public. There had not been a silver Smith found for years now. Tal was a novelty in their eyes—a dangerous one, whose kind were known to be treasonous dissidents.

  The Destroyer kept a pleasant expression on her face as her mind raced through the possibilities. She had been up all night thinking of them, and attempting to discuss them with Tal, who seemed infuriatingly uninvested in his own survival. The best option, she thought now, would be to claim that Tal would be useful to her regime. That he was indeed a silver Smith, but a loyal one who was sworn to defend her—an oath which, she could postulate, would now extend to the entirety of her empire. He was useful. A seer on a leash. She could make them see that.

  Even if the idea of anyone trying to “leash” Tal made her want to call on her fire noose again.

  “And not only that,” Albinus was continuing, “but he has committed the crime of treason by hiding this knowledge from the late Iron Empress and the newly-crowned Mercurial Empress, pretending loyalty while using his visions to undermine their rule.”

  Tal finally spoke. “I have done no such thing,” he said in a low tone that nonetheless carried through the audience. They murmured and rustled again in response.

  Albinus narrowed his eyes. “The accused will be silent, or the accused will be made to be silent.”

  “Touch him and you will be the one on your knees,” the Destroyer snarled.

  The audience shifted, their wide eyes darting between her and Albinus and Tal. Internally, she cursed herself. She couldn’t let them know how desperate she was to save him. She had to retake control. “The accused has served me loyally for years, and his ‘treason’ has not yet been proven. I will not have any faithful subject harmed without the requisite evidence.” There. The audience would surely be glad that she appreciated loyalty and was not quick to jump to deadly conclusions.

  But Albinus strode across the stage, grabbed Tal’s arm, and cut a shallow slice across his bicep with a small copper blade he must’ve hidden in a pocket. The audience cried out, but not on Tal’s behalf; in the morning sunlight, the silver trickle of blood running down his arm shone brightly.

  Albinus held up the blade that was now dripping silver. “
The requisite evidence, Your Highness,” he said, one eyebrow raised in triumph.

  Nyx had stolen a cloak this morning. She pulled it closer over her shoulders now as if she were cold, in actuality using it to cover the crossbow as she unfolded it.

  She wanted to growl when she heard the Destroyer defend Tal. The bitch didn’t care about Tal for his own sake; she was possessive of him like a spoiled child with a favorite toy, not liking anyone else to break it. But even as Nyx thought it, she heard the waver in the Destroyer’s voice, saw the way her magic flared around her and made the air sizzle with violence, and she was pierced with a needle of doubt. The Destroyer didn’t sound petulant. She sounded worried, and furious.

  The people around her caught on her tone too, whispering and staring, wondering if the new empress was either even more unstable than they had thought, or perhaps—somehow, unimaginably—cared for her bodyguard as she had displayed care for no one else before.

  Nyx hesitated as she unfolded the last wing of the crossbow. She watched Albinus, and she watched the Destroyer, and she wondered which one looked like a petulant child and which truly cared about Tal’s life.

  She steeled herself then, pulled the shattered bits of her cocoon back around herself, glued them in place with will and determination. She made herself remember how she had felt in the prison car, with the smell of burnt hair singing her nostrils, her hands spasming on the floor like dying creatures as the Destroyer loomed mercilessly above.

  She finished unfolding the crossbow. She loaded the arrow.

  Tal barely listened as Albinus continued the list of accusations, comparing him to past traitors and revealing that he had dug up the records of Tal’s parents, who had been among those ill-fated silver Smiths who had attempted to lead a coup on the eve of Elodie’s seventh birthday. As the audience shifted their wide-eyed attention from him to Elodie, Tal scanned the audience, searching for the assassin who would end his life.

  He recalled his vision, trying to judge from the angle of the small crossbow bolt where it would originate. If Tal himself had come here to kill someone on the stage, he would hide in one of the taller trees where the foliage would shelter him. There was a strong wind today, though, which was likely to impact the aim of even the most experienced archer from so high up. Plus the guards had certainly done a security sweep of the entire garden before they had let anyone in. That left lying in wait amongst the audience as the best option for an assassin. They would need to be close to the front for the wind to not affect their aim. He narrowed his search to the first five or ten rows.

  At his back, Albinus finished speaking. Elodie spoke next, each word carefully weighed and delivered as she spoke of Tal’s service to the crown, naming the assassins and Saints he had killed in defense of her, the plots he had unmasked within the high courts themselves. He steeled himself against the memories each name jarred loose. Perhaps the arrow that would end him today belonged to a family member of someone he had killed. He hoped so. That way, maybe his death might begin to pay the blood debt against him, and bring some form of justice. That wasn’t promised to him, though, and most of all he wanted what had been promised. If the price he had to pay for that great goal was his death, so be it.

  But he couldn’t deny, even to himself, that he was afraid.

  Nyx watched the Destroyer rise from her throne. She paced to the traditional spot of the defender, standing just behind Tal. She spoke of his virtues. In a clear, even voice, she spoke of his oath as if it were still intact. She wondered aloud if his silver blood might be of benefit to the empire, if perhaps it would be hasty to end the life of someone so loyal to the crown, someone sworn on metal to defend it, someone who could give the country and its ruler a remarkable advantage against their enemies. Skillfully, with subtle turns of phrase and thoughtful questions, she led the audience to wonder what made Albinus so eager to kill a loyal subject who could give all of them such benefits.

  Nyx listened as the crowd rustled, pondering their empress’s words, peering now at Albinus with narrowed eyes, wondering where his loyalties lie—and where they wanted their own loyalties to lie. It was a dangerous game the Destroyer was playing now. She was leading her subjects to question Albinus’s motivations, but in so doing, she was giving them the chance to potentially ally themselves with him—with a would-be ruler who had healing magic instead of the unstable and destructive magic of mercury, who was older and therefore more experienced.

  Nyx hesitated, the loaded crossbow on her lap hidden by her cloak. She could think of no reason why the Destroyer would risk such a thing for Tal’s sake…unless her feelings for him could possibly echo the same care that Tal seemed to feel for her. Nyx had not been willing to believe such a thing of her enemy before, but now, with an assassin’s weapon in her lap and the end of her own life fast approaching, she wondered if there might be another way. If she might have missed something, or been unwilling to see it.

  What would Helenia say if she were here? Probably something annoying like violence is never a good answer, or some proverb or scripture that would gently but firmly condemn Nyx’s plan. Except it wasn’t really even Nyx’s plan, was it? It was Saasha’s. Nyx had left her mother last night not long after their conversation, certain of what she had to do to save her brother, but now that the moment was at hand she found that certainty draining away. Saasha had said that killing the Destroyer was the only way to save Tal but now it seemed that the Destroyer herself might want to save Tal.

  And then the Destroyer raised her chin and took a breath, ready to end her line of argument. “Tal is a seer, but I believe he is one who can be leashed for the good of the empire.”

  And just like that, Nyx’s certainty flooded back in, surging on a tide of fury. So this was why she had wanted to save Tal. Not because she cared for him, but because she wanted to use him. Tal had served her at the cost of his soul for two years and now she wanted to corrupt his magic as well. Even if the Destroyer forced Albinus to heal his rust phage, it would only be for the purposes of wielding him like a weapon against those who opposed her. The fact that he was no longer truly under oath to her didn’t matter; she had plenty of ways to enforce her will against him.

  Nyx waited for the Destroyer to glance away, at Albinus, before she raised the crossbow.

  Tal’s breathing had accelerated. The arguments had reached their end. Elodie was about to pronounce his sentence. Even if it was to be a favorable one, even if she managed to find some way to pardon him without giving up her power or weakening her reign, this could still only end one way.

  His god had shown him what had to happen for his promise to be fulfilled. He had asked one last thing of Tal. And Tal had said yes. He would not go back on his word now, no matter how frightened he was.

  Something burgeoned around him, an invisible sense of weight, a presence. His god steadied him. It will be well, whispered a voice that wasn’t a voice somewhere deep within.

  The Destroyer returned to the empress’s elevated iron throne. She sat down, prepared to render her ultimate judgment.

  Tal scanned the audience one last time—and spotted the assassin.

  Shaved head. Fierce brown eyes and sharp cheekbones and a face he would recognize anywhere: Nyx. She held a miniature crossbow whose bolt dripped with purple.

  No. No. Not Nyx. If it was her who killed him, she would never forgive herself. She could never be happy. She would never be able to forget this moment, this choice, her finger on the trigger and her arrow lodging in her own brother’s back.

  But neither could he let the arrow strike Elodie.

  He shifted his weight, desperate to catch her attention. Her gaze moved from the Destroyer to him. Their eyes locked.

  Nyx’s finger froze on the crossbow’s trigger. Tal’s eyes held her. He shook his head minutely, his jaw tight, his gaze pleading. He didn’t want her to do it. Because he didn’t want the Destroyer’s death, or because he knew that Nyx herself would be killed afterwards?

  She hesitat
ed again. She looked at Albinus. His mouth was a straight line, his expression surly. The Destroyer, in contrast, looked triumphant. The white flames that had wreathed her had died down to sparks. She seemed…relieved.

  Nyx’s gaze returned to Tal’s. Her hesitation stretched out into the space between heartbeats, filling her up and displacing her certainty once again.

  She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t sure enough that it was the right thing.

  The thought brought with it a heady rush of her own relief. She would trust Tal, and not her mother, who longed for a vengeance that would end the life of her own daughter. Nyx would trust the exasperating and beloved voice of her girlfriend, who was apparently able to wedge herself into Nyx’s thoughts even though she must be miles away in reality.

  With a shaky exhalation, Nyx began to lower the crossbow.

  “I pronounce the sentence of…” the Destroyer began, and then Nyx’s neighbor shifted in his seat and jostled her arm.

  Nyx’s finger jerked on the trigger. The crossbow fired.

  Tal saw his sister make her decision. He saw her lower her weapon. A stunned sense of impossibility swept over him then—his sister trusted him, even over her own hatred. She would not go through with the assassination. He started to smile at her.

  And then his gaze fell to the man next to her. He was wearing peasant clothing, but his bearing was much straighter and his gaze sharper than most of the audience. He looked like an off-duty guard or perhaps a mercenary. Tal followed his line of sight.

  He was looking at Albinus. And Albinus was looking at him.

  Tal inhaled sharply, his instincts screaming a warning, but before he could say anything the man reacted to some signal from the Lord of Copper and elbowed Nyx.