Ah. There was my answer. One of the men in uniform wore a gilt-edged helm, his grizzled face shaved clean, and a tuft of red horsehair tied to the pommel of his sword. He’d be a general, then. He could have ordered his soldiers to come here. His eyes were fixed on Gundt as his men dragged our friend toward him.
I swallowed at my first clear look at Gundt. He hung between two soldiers, his feet dragging in the pine needles behind him. There was no sign of his short sword anywhere.
Not good.
Not good at all.
There were four of us if you counted Mally. Two were injured now. All four captive.
Even if the other privateer Flame Riders made it this far, they weren’t going to be flying in on phoenixes to rescue us – not until nightfall.
And I wasn’t sure we’d live until then.
Against us were a powerful lady, a general, a raider ... and who were those two?
Two people in finery stood a little to the side, hands raised to cover nose and mouth delicately. They were both older than middle age. Both grey-haired. But they wore different colors with different sigils embroidered on the front panel and the older woman wore a heavy veil to obscure her features, while the man was bareheaded and cold in demeanor.
Nobles.
What manner of madness was this? Nobles, a general, raiders and Stryxex. It was like a coup being planned against the Grand Hadri. But did they really think they could get away with that?
And beside the whirling wheel, I noticed another figure for the first time. He stood beside Mally’s device of torture, a look of concentration on his face and his hands held out as if he was manipulating something. After a moment, I realized a long narrow black thread poured from his fingertips into the wheel. Was he the one spinning it?
My eyes went huge at the same moment that I heard Judicus mutter an ugly curse. He’d seen the man, too. And as I realized what I was seeing, I realized he looked a lot like Judicus – pale of skin, his coat long and billowing, they could be cousins.
Or maybe that was just how all rope workers looked.
I barely remembered the one I had killed in Lady Lightland’s pavilion. The thought of him made my throat feel tight. I didn’t think I’d be sending bars of flames into anyone today. I didn’t think I was going to get out of this alive at all.
Something dark crossed over the sun, leaving goosebumps to rise across my skin as the air suddenly went colder.
And when I looked up, I felt colder still.
Descending upon us was a cloud of what I at first took for birds.
They were not birds.
My breath froze in my chest as I realized what they really were.
Stryxex.
Chapter Eighteen
The descent of the Stryxex took all eyes off of us.
Even mine.
We froze where we were, standing just at the base of the stairs where they opened into the basin. Even the ropeworker spinning Mally’s wheel dropped his hands and her wheel wobbled to a stop.
A look of horror filled the general’s face and even from so far away, I could hear his words slice through the air, “What have you done?”
I didn’t understand at first. Didn’t understand why all his men seemed equally horrified.
After all, there were two Stryxex riders standing with Lady Lightland. Had they not seen them when they arrived.
It wasn’t until the Stryxex settled just in front of the wheel – three ranks of three of them – that I realized they had come with prisoners.
Their leader – a rider with a grizzled face and reddish hair, leapt from his Stryxex, wobbling slightly as he tried to find his footing. Half his face was awash with blood. The others looked just as worn. The Stryxex – when I looked closely – were missing feathers. One moved awkwardly, and I realized one of its feet was gone entirely. And their riders were just as battered. The one nearest me fell bonelessly from his Stryxex and hit the earth. There were five arrows sticking out of his back. No one even bothered to run to him to help.
But they were not alone.
They had captives with them that they dragged from the backs of their Stryxex and threw to the ground in front of the two older people in the fancy clothing.
Were they the leaders here, then, and not the general or Lady Lightland?
“Counselors,” the redhead said in a gravelly voice. “Your prizes. Delivered as requested.”
“We asked for assurances that you could overthrow the throne,” the female counselor said. “We did not ask for prisoners.”
I glanced at Judicus and he mouthed the words, “Advisors. Grand Hadri.”
Two of his advisors, then. Traitors. I was right about the coup attempt.
I swallowed as the redheaded man laughed.
“I think you’ll find some assurance,” his mouth twisted at that word, “in this.”
He ripped the sack off the head of the first prisoner and then went down the line ripping the sacks from their heads. I gasped.
Refrento was the first man. There was a red wound where one of his eyes had been.
I bit my lip as my vision grew blurry for a moment. Oh no.
Dalissa Fenwan was the second. She swayed, started to slump, and was cuffed hard on the cheek for her weakness. Refrento leaned to the side, supporting her as she fell against him.
My hands were sweating, breath coming too fast as the third hood was removed.
Duche Olliman. Blood, dried and black, coated his chin. I feared for what that meant. Me, more than anyone else, because I knew what it was to have no voice.
My eyes prickled with tears and it was all I could do to hold them back. Our allies. Our friends. The only people who knew where we were and could possibly rescue us – and they had already been defeated.
But who was the fourth person?
A tiny cry sounded, and Lady Lightland’s hand flew to her mouth. She must have realized who it was even though I could not.
I swallowed down my fear – what could be so bad that it would draw that kind of reaction from the most cold-hearted woman I’d ever met?
Fear lit her eyes.
And then, with a smirk, the redheaded Stryxex rider yanked the sack from over the head of the fourth figure and silence fell across the basin.
The man, bound hand and foot, still seemed to loom as he leaned forward and said, in a voice like a lion, “And now, what will you do, little mice? Now, what will you do when you’ve brought the lion to your dinner table?”
I bit my cheek so hard that blood rushed into my mouth as I realized there really was no one left who knew where we were because the man on his knees was Captain Rackham, the Grand Hadri of the Calicarn Empire, he who had sworn us as privateers. And he who was being betrayed before our eyes by his advisors, his generals, and his own soldiers.
Chapter Nineteen
The moment passed and the raiders pushed us forward.
“Come on now,” the nearest one said. “You’re missing the party.”
And though my brain was scrambling for a solution – some scrap of something that could get us out of this mess – nothing was coming to me. It was as if every thread that had led us to this point was tangled together now, forming a net I hadn’t realized was weaving to capture us as surely as a fish in the sea.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Mally moving. I kept my eyes dead ahead, refusing to notice in case it drew attention to her.
“You captured the Grand Hadri himself?” one of the advisors asked – though it was obviously not a real question. He was right before them, after all. There could be no doubt. “But how?”
“We told you that our Stryxex were powerful,” the redhead said, leering down at the Grand Hadri. When I wasn’t looking, he had drawn a sword and pressed the blade to the ruler’s throat.
I was trying to keep my eyes on him now, as we were marched toward him, the raiders using their spears to make the point that they wanted us moving. But as we moved, I was keeping track of Mally out of the corner of
my eye. She’d slipped out of her bonds somehow and laid the manacles silently on the bottom of the cage. Everything she touched was streaked in red and blood ran freely from her many wounds, but determination filled her every movement.
We were almost upon the group when she slipped from the cage entirely and it was our sudden arrival that masked her slinking behind us and into the dome-roofed temple.
I kept my eyes ahead and my expression careful. There was only one way out of this basin unless you could fly. Could she slip up that narrow walkway, too?
Maybe.
If there was enough distraction down here that even the soldiers guarding the horse pickets were distracted, then maybe she could slip past everyone.
I held my breath and hoped.
We had caught up with Gundt, and he was tossed – bloody and stumbling – to the ground beside the other Flame Riders. He tried to surge back to his feet and was clubbed on the head with the hilt of a sword, leaving him gasping on all fours. He retched. They hit him again, and this time he collapsed on the ground.
I flinched from the sight of their cruelty, my heart wrapped up in Gundt and his pain. This wasn’t right. They shouldn’t be doing any of this. The horror of it was too much – so much that I thought that even Lady Lightland was finding it to be more than she’d expected. Her face was very pale.
“We’re committed now,” the female advisor said from beneath her veil. “The six of us are committed to this course of action. There is no turning back now that we have taken this step.”
The general’s mouth twisted at her words, but the eyes of Horacen – the leader of the Hand of the Rat – glittered with excitement.
“We are ready to begin,” he said. “Shall we strike tonight?”
“I need to move my armies back,” the general said quietly. “I’d like to spare as many as I can. Your raiders will stick to the approved paths to Briccatore. No deviations. No accidents. This is meant to throw the nobility into disarray, to root out who in the army is with us and who must be sent to the slaughter. It is not meant to slaughter the population.”
“There will always be those who die in wars,” the Grand Hadri said. He flinched when the blade was put against his throat a second time, this time it drew a tiny drop of blood and I froze.
I’d never heard of the Grand Hadri before I met Judicus. I’d never heard of Flame Riders, or the Hand of the Rat, or Stryxex. But even girls from villages knew what happened when rulers were pulled down. It meant war, which meant famine and poverty for everyone – even people far away awaiting trade ships and sons to return. It meant deaths – not just of powerful people brought low – but deaths of those caught up in the confusion of war, of those who just happened to live or to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It meant waste – the waste of crops burned in fields. The waste of animals slaughtered for armies to eat, the waste of people dead or robbed for no reason but some other person’s whim.
And all at once, two things ignited inside me. One was rage that these fools would gather here and doom everyone else for their own ambition. And the other was frustration. Because this time right now, of all times, was the time when someone with a clever word might make a difference and stop this. And I could not speak all the words bubbling up and tumbling through my heart and head.
And before I could so much as look at Judicus, he reached out and squeezed my hand and then pushed past the surprised raiders surrounding us. He angled to the side until he was between the prisoners and the conspirators so that I could not even see him through the thick bodies of the raiders who were pressing forward to get a good look at him.
And when he spoke, his voice was pitched loud like an orator – exactly how I would pitch mine if I could speak as I’d wished.
“Listen to my words, sons and daughters of Briccatore, listen, soldiers of honor, listen you from far shores,” and to my utter surprise, they did seem to be listening to him.
“Don’t give us that time-honored opening, Irault,” Lady Lightland drawled as if she was the only one there who didn’t care what was happening. I knew better. I’d been watching her and even now her gaze would stick when it passed over the fallen form of her half-brother. “Just because it means we have to hear you out doesn’t mean we won’t kill you when you’re done. Shouldn’t you be dead already? I left you to the mercies of the sea.”
But Lady Lightland was no longer the one in charge of this and the male advisor shushed her.
“Quiet, my lady. The oration has begun, and tradition says that any who begin in such a manner must be allowed to say their piece, even prisoners condemned to death as this one is now that I know who he is,” he sounded almost gracious except for that casual comment about how he was happy to kill Judicus. “Go on now, Judicus Franzer Irault, son of the Lord of Chaos. Speak your piece before we slit your throat.”
“I am indeed Chaos’s son,” Judicus said, still in orator’s voice. “I have seen the depths of darkness and I have risen from the ashes of a dead man.”
I was so intent on his words that it took me a heartbeat before I realized that the raiders weren’t watching me anymore, and no one else was, either. I could sneak off just like Mally and no one would ever know. It would be easy. I could regroup and come back for Judicus and Gundt. If they were still alive.
Or.
I bit my lip and thought of all those children dying from war. All those people with their crops burning and their homes destroyed. I thought of Aunt Danna giving everything for her girl and how these people would ask for the chance to do the same thing if they knew how to do that.
So, I could try to save myself and the ai’sletta, too.
Or I could try for something more.
And for a moment I felt a tingle of fire in my fingertips, almost as if Kazmerev were watching me and trying to tell me that he’d be with me, if only I would try.
Chapter Twenty
I slipped backward, one step, two steps, and sidled toward where the Grand Hadri was on his knees with a blade to his throat. Judicus, shifted his weight as he spoke, seemingly naturally, but I caught the barest fraction of his eye as he did it. He saw what I was doing, and he was trying to help.
“You remember my father, may his tale burn bright forever,” he said. “You remember how he would not suffer injustice when he found it through the ranks of the people. How he rooted it out from the lowest beggar to the greatest prince, toppling even the ruler of the country itself – Grand Hadri Jemisin Falca Greniline. He dragged him from his bed and cut off his head on the palace steps and from him he seized both city and country.”
He did? I shook off my surprise at that and focused on what I was doing.
I was right behind the Grand Hadri, but I couldn’t act. The redhead still lingered back with the prisoners, his blade to the Grand Hadri’s throat. The bloody side of his face was toward me and I could tell he couldn’t see well from that side, but if I moved he’d notice.
I swallowed and looked up at Judicus. I could see in his eyes the moment he realized my predicament. He leaned forward, speaking in such a low tone now that this audience leaned forward, too, hoping to hear better. The redhead leaned with them, but he was still here, still paying attention.
“And what did he do to the hidden Hand of the Rats who he found in the secret wing of the palace? What did he do to their emissary of the red hair and ruddy beard? What else ran red that night?”
And I didn’t know if the story was true or if he was making it up right there, but the sword tip dipped in the redhead’s hand and he took a subconscious step forward, eyes locked onto Judicus.
“What happened when it was found out that man was a traitor to his people, that he had sold them as surely as our ruler had sold us?”
The redheaded raider took another step, “Lies!”
And then he took two more and now they were all watching him as he made his way toward Judicus, the bound prisoners forgotten.
I sprang into action.
Quick
ly, I hurried down the line, deftly nipping the bonds of the Flame Riders as Judicus continued to speak. This speech was his sacrifice for us all. I didn’t think he’d survive it. It was made to infuriate the powerful and with their own rage, to turn their purpose against them.
“Oh, but he had,” Judicus said. “He’d sold them for a golden palace and a wife of his choosing – such a small bribe for such a great thing. And when my father heard of it, he slit his throat, too, and every man with him. And they dragged the corpses to the docks and set them on a ship bound for their homelands where the sailors leapt from ship to boat and lit them as a pyre to be found by their people.”
His speech was just long enough for me. I severed the knots at the Grand Hadri’s wrists and heels while the Flame Riders I’d freed were still frozen in shock.
“And now we’ve come for what is ours,” Horacen growled and the redheaded Stryxex rider growled with him and for the first time I realized that was who these Stryxex riders were – the Hand of the Rat. Mounted raiders. A chill flowed through me. “And you’ll die for what your father did.”
The redheaded rider leapt forward, slashing toward Judicus with his sword.
Black ropes shot from Judicus’s hands as he turned the blows and around him, his enemies fumbled for weapons, their shouts echoing through the basin.
There was a growl from in front of me as the Grand Hadri surged to his feet and then fell back down with a muffled cry. And then Refrento was in front of me, single eye blazing with passion.
“Get him out of here,” he whispered, shoving the Grand Hadri at me as the other Flame Riders formed a wall in front of us. “We’ll deal with the traitors.”
I looked from him to the Grand Hadri who he wrenched back to his feet and shoved into my arms. His leg, I realized, was dangling at an odd angle from the knee down and his black boots and black trousers were disguising how soaked they were in blood. He couldn’t stand on his own, certainly couldn’t fight.
Phoenix Heart: Episode 5: Grand Hadri Page 7