Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  After tearing off my stained clothing, I pulled on breeches, a lightweight tunic, and boots, barely taking the time to scrub my feet with a wet cloth. Without comment, Kadri’s maid rolled the soiled skirt into a ball, either to launder it or to toss it in a fire. I asked her to give Ivria’s emerald dress to Kadri in exchange for the garments I’d ruined.

  As I arranged my dagger at my hip, Glisette began to stir. I paused, hoping she would drift back to sleep, but she blinked at me, rolled up on her elbow, and purred, “What were you and Mercer doing last night?”

  “What do you think?” I demanded, shouldering my satchel.

  “You weren’t doing that,” she said with ruthless confidence. “You were on a secret mission of sorts. You’re not going to Darmeska, are you? You’re going on an adventure.”

  I didn’t answer as I leashed Calanthe.

  Glisette launched herself from the sofa and shimmied out of her robe. “I’m going to need to borrow some plain clothes. Didn’t you have a shirt that was too baggy across your chest? I think it would fit me.”

  I reached for the door handle while she sifted through the suitcase I was forced to leave behind. But the door swung open without my help.

  Mercer stood at the threshold, breathless, bursts of golden fire gleaming in the brown of his eyes. “There are riders coming through the city,” he said. “Bearing a gray standard with a white moth.”

  My heart seemed to simultaneously dive to my belly and leap to my throat. I thought of Mercer’s brother, Tilmorn the warrior, and the emissaries sent to escort him to the Moth King’s court—if that was indeed true.

  “Won’t the guards shoot them down?” I asked as Calanthe shoved by me, relying on her tremendous size to win Mercer’s attentions when whapping him with her tail didn’t work.

  “I couldn’t convince Fabian to give the order,” Mercer said, gently nudging the hound away by the snout. “The guards won’t attack a small band of riders unless they prove hostile. And by then it could be too late for us to escape.”

  “Us?” I demanded.

  He peered over my head at Glisette, who had pulled on one of my gray tunics and now squirmed into a pair of my breeches.

  “We have to go. I’ll explain later.” Mercer put a hand on my shoulder and attempted to steer me out.

  “Don’t manhandle me,” I said, jerking away. “Maybe in your time it was fine to fling ladies about like sacks of potatoes, but now it’s considered rude.”

  “In his time?” Glisette repeated, flicking her blond ringlets out from under her tunic collar.

  Mercer gritted his teeth and squared himself in front of me, but he didn’t touch me again. It occurred to me as he loomed like a storm cloud that he could be dangerous if he desired—and that was without regard for the gem around his neck.

  “I heard the ambassador. I know he doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him. I truly don’t. But I told you everything and I thought you understood.”

  I paused, my hand on the doorframe, and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Without another word, Mercer caught Calanthe’s leash and tugged it from my grasp, charging down the corridor.

  “Don’t you dare!” I screeched, storming after him.

  When I lunged for the leash, he turned on me. The intensity in his eyes took me aback, but it melted quickly and he let out a sigh. “My visions put me a step ahead of everyone else. They can make me single-minded and impatient. I promise you I wouldn’t have risked your life with the trade if I weren’t certain you’d survive in one piece to…to…” He trailed off.

  “To what?” I asked.

  A dizzying realization sprang up. I saw the Moth King bleeding to death, the life leaving his eyes, Mercer had said of his prophecy. My vision meant that someone was strong enough to destroy him, forever, not merely restrain him.

  “To—” he started again.

  “To kill the Moth King?” I asked over him.

  I longed for Mercer to laugh at the thought. But he maintained his somber expression. “Yes.”

  There was so much packed into his answer: hope, resolve, pity, fear. But I couldn’t see beyond my own fear to forgive him for being the bearer of this news.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked feebly.

  “There’s not much more I can tell you. I didn’t recognize you in my visions of the Moth King’s demise until I had another one at the inn.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” he said with a step in my direction. “I saw you twisting a knife in his heart. You have no idea how much hope and confusion that sight brought me. I didn’t know who you were, or where I might find you. But you’re here, and the Moth King’s servants are on their way, and you’re likely wanted on suspicion of murder by now. So we have to go.”

  Orderly footsteps—several pairs of them—thudded nearer. At the very least, the Realm Alliance would want me for questioning. And with Neswick involved, I knew that wouldn’t end in them turning me free. I had no choice but to escape now and strategize later.

  Mercer started off, trusting I would follow. Long-limbed Calanthe nearly dragged me through the lesser-trod passages we pursued. A rogue set of footsteps chased us the entire way with panic-inducing persistence. I pushed through the burning in my lungs until we ended our trek at a door that swung open to reveal a glorified closet with wood paneling.

  Prince Fabian and two guards waited for us. For a fleeting second, I thought I’d been lured into another trap. But one of the guards shoved a panel and it swung open to reveal stairs.

  “I couldn’t secure horses on such short notice, and this was all the coin I could get without raiding the vault.” Fabian shoved a jangling bag into Mercer’s hand—aurions for the journey, no doubt. “Fortune be with you.”

  “Thank you, Fabian,” Mercer said, slipping the purse down the neck of his bloody tunic, the same from last night’s banquet. They patted each other’s shoulders as though they’d been friends for years. The thought of leaving Kadri behind without so much as a farewell smarted.

  “Wait!” someone yelled, and I stuck my head out the door to see Glisette pursuing us in overlarge boots she had clearly persuaded a servant to hand over. Her blue velvet trunk banged against her thighs. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You can’t—it’s a—coming after us!” My protest was inarticulate, and she dismissed it as such.

  “I made it my mission to help fix this,” she said, breathless. “You could always use another elicromancer on your side.”

  “Just hurry!” Mercer growled, jogging down the stairs. I followed him and shortly emerged among the jagged rock formations beneath Fabian’s balcony, in the lagoon where I’d first seen the sea maiden. The salty air reminded me too acutely of the nauseating sea witch elixir.

  Mercer leapt over a jagged ledge with ease. I suspected this was not the first time he’d been forced to make an escape in a pinch. Calanthe and I scrambled after him, but Glisette materialized beyond the rocky terrain to wait for us where the sand met the stone path leading to the gardens.

  “Don’t materialize!” I heard Mercer snap. The coin purse had slid into the belly of his tunic, resting on his belt. Without regard for how ridiculous he looked, he jumped off the final ledge and landed next to Glisette. “Someone’s laid traps.”

  Calanthe and I caught up to them, her athletic prowess putting me to shame.

  “Traps?” Glisette demanded.

  “The Neutralizer died from one,” Mercer explained, swinging open the garden gate.

  “Is that what the blood is all about?” she asked. Fear burned raw in her voice. “I need to warn my sisters.”

  “They’ll hear soon enough. Fabian will make sure of it.”

  Magnificent hedges traced their way along elaborate fountains and ivy-strewn pavilions. Waterfalls tumbled into a private swimming beach for palace guests. The archery field where Kadri often practiced stretched vivid and green alongside the shore. And amid all that grandeur, there was not a
single guard. I assumed we had Fabian to thank for that.

  The morning shadows turned the sweat on my neck cold as we hurried through the garden, casting glances in every direction before slipping through the outer gate, which stood conveniently ajar.

  On the other side, we found a grim-faced Rayed. To my shock, he drew his sword. The naked steel sang a high note as he trained it on Mercer with a deft flick of his wrist.

  Mercer reacted before I could—I felt a tug at my hip when he snatched my dagger from its sheath just as Rayed glided forward to make his blade softly kiss the skin of the boy’s throat. Mercer held the point of my knife just beneath the ambassador’s exposed underarm. They had maneuvered themselves into a deadlock quicker than I could have uttered the word.

  “Ambassador, what are you doing?” I asked timidly.

  “Why won’t you leave them alone, you parasite?” he demanded of Mercer. “They’ve suffered enough of your lies and nonsense. We all have.”

  “Don’t make me use my advantage against a mortal,” Mercer said in a low voice, his elicrin stone illuminating with a warning flash.

  “And what advantage would that be, exactly?” Rayed demanded, nearly nose-to-nose with Mercer. His grip on the blade tightened until his tendons bulged, tense and dangerous. “The ability to ‘twist the minds of men until they crawl like beasts in confusion’? To tell ‘lies like poisoned honey’?”

  “Whoever we’re running from will catch us if you two don’t stop comparing cocks,” Glisette snapped.

  “He’s the one you ought to run from,” Rayed sneered.

  “Let us pass, Rayed,” I said, managing to sound calm despite the thrashing of my heart. “It is my choice to go with him. Any consequences will be mine to face.”

  They stared each other down for a few more beats. Mercer was the first to lower his weapon. He offered me the hilt and I sank it concisely in its sheath. Teeth bared, Rayed slid the blade away from Mercer’s throat.

  Brushing past Rayed with defiance etched on his face, Mercer led us down a sloping cobblestone path. We crossed the main thoroughfare before turning into an alley crowded with laundry lines and barrels of fish and crates of chickens. We jogged with the rising sun at our backs, navigating the tight, unfamiliar streets. Many stared at Glisette’s flowing golden hair until Mercer stuffed several thesars into a young boy’s hand and swiped the hat off his head, offering it to her.

  “Do the people chasing us have to do with the Neutralizer’s death?” she asked me as she tucked her curls into the cap.

  Fear knitted my lips together, but I squeaked out a small “Yes” and continued on.

  Dark shapes filled my periphery to the right, and I glanced down the alley to see riders traveling down a parallel road, moving toward the palace. The crowds around them fell to such a hush that even from afar I could hear the canter of their horses’ hooves. The riders neither crept nor charged through the city—no, they rambled, shoulders relaxed and chins held high as though Beyrian belonged to them, as though the streets had been paved for them. There were six riders, one a standard-bearer who turned to look down our alley as he passed.

  An eerie, pale moth fluttered across the tattered fabric he carried.

  Under the rider’s hood, one eye glowed an opaque, milky white. A patch of skin around his lip was dark gray and rimmed with red lesions, nearly resembling a wide, crooked smile. I caught a flash of the same sort of pestilence on a band of exposed skin between his glove and sleeve.

  A lump of terror bobbed in my throat. Everything inside me wanted to crumple and cower and hide because I knew what he was: a blight, an elicromancer who had performed enough dark magic to begin rotting from the inside out. But I focused on a rogue curl bouncing gaily from Glisette’s hat and continued following her one step at a time, until we could no longer see the riders.

  The alley curved and widened to a dirt road as the buildings on either side of us shrank. We meandered our way through a herd of spotted cattle and crossed a bridge over a river roaring toward the sea. By the time we slowed to a walk on the far side of a craggy hill, a shaft of pain cut through my ribs and my legs felt like limp wineskins.

  “They were blights,” I said to the others, gulping for breath.

  Mercer merely adjusted the strap on his broad shoulder with a grim expression. Glisette stopped in her tracks.

  “But how would any dark elicromancers have escaped the attention of the Conclave long enough to become a blight?” Glisette asked, winded. “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

  “I’m sure.” My hand shook as I wiped away sweat trickling past my ear. “It means the whole city is in danger.”

  “We need to keep moving,” Mercer said, cutting his elegant features west.

  “We need to turn back and warn them,” I argued. “The disease could spread. There’s no remedy for mortals, none except the gift of elicrin healing.”

  I thought of Melkior. Fates help us if he was one of our only hopes against a ravaging plague—but if that was the case, I’d drag him to do the grim work myself.

  “We can’t risk the riders catching us,” Mercer said. “Getting you safe is our goal.”

  “People will die,” I said.

  “Why getting her safe?” Glisette demanded, but Mercer ignored her.

  “For as long as the Moth King lives, there will be atrocities we can’t stop. They will happen to innocent people. It doesn’t help to cut off one head of a many-headed serpent. You have to stab it in the heart.”

  “So we’re supposed to just let this happen?” I asked.

  “It’s too late to warn them about the blights. Fabian will warn the Realm Alliance about the Moth King and explain to them why you needed to run. I told him everything. We’ll get the help we need to end this.”

  Mercer hadn’t looked back at me once, so I yanked his arm and forced him to face me. “We can’t—”

  “If we go back, we may save a few lives,” he said. “But I’m not risking yours to do it. Every day Emlyn Valmarys breathes is a day people die.”

  “You don’t care about Kadri or Ambassador Lillis or Fabian or those people we just passed.” My voice was hoarse with anger. “You only care about vengeance.”

  He stepped closer so that I had to tilt my head up to look him in the eye, which made me feel powerless. “I have fought this fight already,” he said. “I have seen this realm ravaged by the Moth King’s rule. I sawed off the head of the serpent only to see it sprout a new one with sharper teeth. Every day I refrained from attempting to rescue Tilmorn. Every day I worried after Lundy and the baby. But every day I left home to fight, to plan, to help. And now you are our greatest hope for freedom.”

  “What…?” I started, feeling a peculiar wrench in my gut at the mention of a woman and a baby.

  “I don’t know how I got here or how I found you,” he went on. “But I have, and we must do what we were meant to do. Trust that I would not arbitrarily leave this city to its fate.” He gestured back at Beyrian, his eyes red-ringed with unshed tears. “But for once I have a clear path. I know this demon. I know his ways. Let’s tear him down.”

  I cast my gaze to his boots but found the courage to look up at him again and nod slowly, even as panic thrummed in my blood.

  With a deep breath, Mercer turned westward.

  “What is happening?” Glisette asked, stomping across the rock-strewn grass to follow him.

  Neither of us answered her. I latched on to Mercer’s mention of these people from his past. It was hard to imagine that he’d started a family during such a bleak time, and his occasional flare of boyishness seemed to preclude paternal experience. But the Archaic Age was a long time ago, and things had been different then. People used to wed and conceive earlier. Before healers had produced contraceptive tonics, a childless relationship between man and woman, like what my mother and Victor sustained, must have been rare.

  I should have felt emboldened and encouraged by Mercer’s certainty, but instead I felt as though the ha
nds of fate had decided to wrap around my throat and squeeze. I missed Grandmum. I ached for her to assure me that the stories of the Moth King were mere myths. Her wisdom and common sense would dismiss Mercer and his vision. Devorian and I had acted foolishly, but surely we had not made the most monumental mistake of the last thousand years.

  But Grandmum wasn’t here, and I couldn’t dismiss the sorrows and the fury of the young man trudging ahead, or the hope he seemed to have placed in me.

  And if I couldn’t dismiss them, I would have to sell myself fully into his trust—to go where he bade, do what he commanded, and accept his prophecy and, therefore, my fate.

  “We need to find a safe place to stop and send a missive back to the Realm Alliance before the routes are compromised,” Mercer said.

  “Maybe Tully?” I suggested, drawing up the familiar map of Nissera in my head. “It’s a small outlying village to the northwest. We can get everything we need at the market.”

  “Sounds fine,” Mercer said before muttering “Aphanis inoden” under his breath to conceal our trail. I silently chided myself for not suggesting the spell first.

  Calanthe cantered alongside us with aplomb while thoughts of home weighed heavily on me, as well as questions I couldn’t answer: Would the riders go to Arna? Was my family safe? How much of the realm might have already fallen prey to this unseen tyrant?

  E approached Tully at the brink of dusk. As townsfolk and traveling merchants broke down their tents in the market square and packed up leftover wares, our eyes prowled for anything resembling a meal. My stomach roared with an appetite earned by slogging across the wilderness. It distracted me so that I’d finally stopped looking over my shoulder for a glimpse of riders in the distance.

  Mercer had offered Glisette a laconic explanation of the sea witch contract and the task set before us—namely, getting me face-to-face with the Moth King. I felt Glisette’s sense of wonder shift to distress as she learned the significance of the contract her brother had broken.