by David Estes
“As you wish.” She placed a towel beside the tub, along with a dressing gown. “Call if you need anything. I will not sleep on this night.”
“Thank you.” Annise watched her go, waiting until the door had closed behind her. She scanned her companions, who seemed too random to be anything but real. Zelda was already snoring, her blanket tucked up under her chin. Annise had so many questions she still needed to ask her aunt, but they would have to wait until morning. Craig’s breathing was heavy, a mountain of pillows blocking his view even if he were to open his eyes. Despite his lifelong deception, she felt inclined to trust his honor. Then there was Tarin, lying on his back, his feet hanging well over the edge of the bed. She wondered whether there was a bed in the entire northern kingdom that could fit him. She couldn’t tell if he was awake, so she made her way over to him, waving a hand across his eye slits.
“I can’t see you, but I can hear you,” he said.
Annise peeled up a corner of the blanket and stuffed it inside his mask’s eye slit. “Thank you,” Tarin said. “That will help with the temptation to steal a peek.”
Annise had the urge to hit him, but feared the sound of her fist banging his armor would wake the other two. She settled for stuffing the blanket in further.
“I feel as if I have cotton in my eyes,” Tarin said.
“Good,” Annise retorted. “Now sleep, you big buffoon, or I’ll be forced to hurt you.”
Before she’d removed a single layer of clothing, Annise already felt naked and exposed. Now, as she pulled off her woolen overcoat, cotton under-layer, thick britches, wool-insulated boots, double-layered socks, and, finally, underclothing, Annise was acutely aware that Tarin could easily pull the blanket out of his eye slits, open his eyes, and see the real her, pale and muscular and curvy and ill-at-ease in her own skin.
The thought made her practically dive into the steaming water, the level rising precariously, nearly sloshing over the sides.
She peeked out to find her trio of companions in the same positions she’d left them. Taking a deep breath, she gave herself over to the steam and warm water, which chased away the chill that had settled deep in her bones for days. She fumbled along the bottom of the tub until she found a sponge and a bar of soap, using them to clean her body from head to toe. When she was finished, she felt human again.
As she climbed from the tub, toweled off, donned the dressing gown, and slipped into bed, she wondered how long the feeling would last.
The next day dawned bright, cold and eager.
Annise yawned, pulling the blankets over her head as white light streamed through the window. Armor creaked nearby. Hushed voices spoke.
With a sigh, Annise threw off the covers and sat up. Tarin was helping Netta empty the washing tub—for each pail she carried, he hefted four, two in each hand. Zelda and Sir Craig sat on the edge of one of the beds, conferring softly. They seemed to be arguing.
“Morning,” Annise said, to no one in particular.
“That’s what they call it when the sun rises,” Tarin said. His eyes met hers just before he turned away, hauling the pails to wherever Netta had asked him to.
Sir Craig stood and offered a half-bow. “Queen Gäric,” he said, and then left before Annise could argue the formal title.
Zelda watched him go, and then stood. She approached Annise, sitting next to her. It was so strange being with her aunt in any capacity. Like with Sir Craig, she’d judged Zelda wrongly in so many ways, succumbing to the rumors that she was a strange recluse who’d completely separated herself from reality. A recluse maybe, and certainly strange, but Aunt Zelda’s eyes were sharp and clear and focused. Frozen hell, she’d had her husband pretending to be a drunk in order to spy on the king!
“I want to clear Arch’s name,” Annise said, the words springing to her lips before she could consider their origin. Why did it matter what the kingdom thought of her brother? She wanted to flee to the Hinterlands with him anyway. Or perhaps to Crimea, like her mother had wanted.
Because he will never leave the northern kingdom, she realized. It was a truth she’d been hiding from for a while, using her dream of carving a life elsewhere as a shield. And if Arch was determined to be king, to rule the north, the people would need to trust him, or at the least respect him. Or fear him, she thought, like they had her father.
Zelda shook her head. “Your brother’s name doesn’t need to be cleared,” she said.
“I was there,” Annise argued. “I saw my father die. It wasn’t Arch. It was something…I can’t explain.” A ghost that looked like another version of Arch.
“The truth doesn’t matter,” Zelda said. “The people already love your brother. Thinking he killed the Dread King of the North will only make them love him more.”
Annise frowned. She hadn’t considered that the northerners might be happy about her father’s death. He’d ruled with fear for so many years…it made sense. She remembered what had happened at the execution, the way the spectators had reacted when Arch was brought out in chains. Appalled. Shocked.
“Fine. So we let them believe he was guilty of treason. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s being hunted by your brother’s soldiers. Trust me, they’ll do anything to find him. To find me. We need to locate Arch before Lord Griswold does.”
Zelda nodded. “There’s something else you need to know, although Sir Craig thinks it’s too soon to tell you.”
What else could there be? Annise wondered. It was like the secrets kept pouring from her aunt’s mouth in a steady stream. “What? Tell me, I cannot bear to be in the dark any longer.”
“Your brother is alive,” Zelda said.
“How can you be certain? You haven’t seen Arch in—”
“Not Arch,” Zelda said.
Annise licked her lips. Surely she didn’t mean…
Annise stood up, her hand rising automatically to comb her hair, still damp from her bath the night before. “I saw the blood,” she said. “I was the one—I was so excited to meet him—to have a baby brother—I went to his crib—there was blood on the sheets—I screamed—I—”
She bit her own hand, fighting back the nightmare that had haunted her sleep for years. Though Annise had only been four years old, the memory was as vivid as any other. There had been gray fur everywhere, stuck to the blood. The wolves had killed her baby brother and dragged him away. Mired in grief, Annise had been sworn to secrecy by her parents. The realm couldn’t know that a prince of the north had been killed by wild animals, and within the castle at that.
“Cow’s blood,” Zelda said now.
Annise shook her head. “It wasn’t. I saw the fur. The wolves—”
“I scattered the fur myself. I drained the blood from a water skin. I took your brother from his bed.”
A tremor ran through Annise’s body. Her legs faltered, buckling under her. Her aunt’s hand shot out to steady her, but she flinched away, losing her balance. She collapsed in a heap, cradling her head in her hands. Sobbing. These lies were too much, and if they weren’t lies…
She couldn’t dare to hope.
Her aunt spoke. “I delivered the child to a man known as Bear Blackboots, an old friend of mine who I could trust, who would be the boy’s keeper, his guardian, his protector, until he came of age. Bear was the perfect choice—he had no family left, no ties, and, like me, he hated my brother with a passion.”
Annise couldn’t process any of it, shaking her head back and forth again and again in denial.
“I’m sorry,” Zelda said. “I had no choice, under the circumstances.”
Annise swiveled her head around and stared at her aunt, her moist eyes flashing with anger. “What circumstances?”
“Your brother bore a skinmark,” she said. “He bears a skinmark.”
“What? Where?”
“On his scalp. A circle broken into eighths by Death’s arrows.”
“How do you know this?”
“I saw it. Your mother did, too.” Zelda s
ighed. “Sabria had reason to believe one of her children would bear a mark. She received information once. A prophecy of sorts. The details aren’t important, save for the fact that your mother believed it. I didn’t put much stock in legend and faith, but I agreed to help her. We secretly inspected each of you after you were born. Once we saw the mark on your brother, we agreed he had to be taken away from your father.”
“My mother knew?” Annise’s teeth were clenched together so hard she thought they might crack under the pressure.
“Yes.”
A single word, like a dart to the heart.
“I don’t understand.” Her father would’ve loved him all the more for having a mark. The marks were power, and power was the only thing her father had worshipped.
“It was the deathmark,” Zelda said. “Your brother bears the deathmark. He is responsible for your father’s death.”
Annise sat on the horse-drawn cart, which rumbled beneath her. She was numb, not from the cold, but from her conversation with Zelda. The apparition she’d seen in the tower had been her lost brother, somehow. And he’d killed his own father, making it appear to be an unfortunate tumble down the tower steps, creating a chain of events that led to her mother’s murder and their current situation.
“It was the only way to stop your father,” Zelda had explained. Apparently all the time she’d spent away from the castle had been to study the prophecies of some strange witch who’d lived in the west more than a century ago. She’d once been known as the Western Oracle. Evidently her writings included information on the skinmarks, which she referred to as fatemarks. When her sister-in-law had given birth to the babe and they’d shone the torchlight over his tiny scalp, they’d instantly known what the mark meant.
Death. Something called the Kings’ Plague, which, according to the Oracle’s prophecies, would result in the deaths of eight rulers, which would somehow bring peace to the Four Kingdoms. It was all very confusing to Annise, who was trying to catch up to her aunt’s vast knowledge of the skinmarks.
Even then, Zelda had known her brother, the king, was evil. Queen Sabria Loren Gäric had known the same thing. They’d plotted against him, removing the babe from where the king might be able to hurt the boy, hoping that one day the child would return to murder his own father.
But when years passed and the boy didn’t return as a young man, and the Dread King continued to reign terror upon the north, her mother and aunt had taken matters into their own hands, plotting to assassinate him.
Annise knew what her father had been capable of. If he’d believed his own son was a threat to his throne, he would’ve killed him without remorse. As much as she hated losing her brother, she couldn’t deny they’d likely saved his life. However, in the end, all their plotting and scheming had cost her mother her life.
“What is his name?” she’d asked, picturing the eerie boy who had appeared on the staircase. The way he’d looked at her, his face so similar to her brother’s that she couldn’t deny the resemblance.
“Bear calls him Bane,” Zelda had replied.
Kings’ Bane, Annise had immediately understood.
They’d been interrupted by Netta, who’d brought breakfast, before Annise could ask anything more. But it didn’t matter. She might not be a scholar of fatemark lore, but now she knew enough to understand what was happening.
Bane had killed her father—his father—and then apparently killed King Loren in the west, too, as well as most of his royal guards. Two dead rulers—six to go.
Not Arch, she thought now, staring at the snowcapped peaks of the Mournful Mountains getting closer and closer, but not really seeing them. Please. Not Arch.
Surely the eastern king would be next. Or perhaps one of the Southron rulers, Empress Sun Sandes or Emperor Vin Hoza. Arch still had time to establish himself in the north, to build up his defenses, didn’t he? And anyway, her uncle had declared himself king in the north, so wouldn’t he be Bane’s next target? In her heart of hearts, she knew he wouldn’t, because he wasn’t the true king.
“Why didn’t you stop Arch from leaving Gearhärt?” Annise muttered to herself. The question was meant for Zelda, but her aunt was on a different cart, trailing behind them, laden with foodstuffs for the troops at Raider’s Pass.
Annise was riding on a cart with Tarin, piled high with gleaming weapons and armor. The carts were escorted by a company of four-score soldiers, who were evidently loyal to Lady Zelda and who had agreed to be the first of Arch’s army, joining however many soldiers he could recruit at Raider’s Pass. They’d come from the east, and were more than ready for a new king. A true king.
Tarin had asked her thrice whether she was alright, and thrice she had simply nodded and waved away the question. He’d eventually given up, and settled in for the short ride south to the Pass, where the streams spoke of an eastern legion bearing royal sigils having made camp in the shadows south of the Mournful Mountains.
Annise wondered what they would find when they arrived.
Twenty-Eight
The Eastern Kingdom, South of Raider’s Pass
Roan
They’d left the defenses at Norris intact, riding out before dawn, mere shadows on a darkened landscape.
No one spoke, not even Gareth, who seemed fresh out of jokes at Roan’s expense. In fact, the prince wouldn’t even look at him, his eyes dancing away whenever Roan tried to meet them. I’ve ruined our friendship, he thought. All for that one ill-advised kiss. And yet the memory of it, as short-lived as it was, warmed his heart.
Gwendolyn took on the role of scout, riding well ahead of the front with two other Orians, both male. From a distance, he could see them laughing and talking. He didn’t feel jealous of them, only sad. Sad that any friendship he might’ve had with Gwen kept slipping further and further away.
Am I destined to be alone, devoid of friends and love? he wondered.
He gritted his teeth and rode onwards, trying to remind himself that such thoughts were childish considering they were riding to war, and he would soon be leaving both of them anyway.
They reached the Snake River at midday, the waters fresh and clean, riding high from the snowmelt to the north. The current was strong, and Roan wondered whether he’d even be able to ford the river when the time came. He was a strong swimmer, but there were dozens of places where a body could be smashed along the rocky shoreline on either side. Across the river was the Tangle, an immense forest that had a reputation for being nearly impenetrable due to the dense foliage full of vines, roots, and spiky plants known to carry poison that caused fever and night chills.
And yet, despite the dangers, the forest was alluring, the first time Roan had laid eyes on the west since he was a baby. All of the answers to his questions about why his mother had to die so he could live, and whether his father knew exactly what she’d done were there, just ready to be discovered. He could almost see them in the shifting branches, in the fluttering leaves. The answer to Roan’s biggest question of all—Can I make a difference in the course of the Hundred Years War?—felt close enough to touch.
Nearby, Guy Ironclad spat in the dirt. “An awful place, aye?” he said, noticing Roan’s gaze toward the west. “If their god, Wrath, was wise, he would let the west sink into the sea.”
“Aye,” Roan said. Maybe it was better that no one spoke to him. “An awful place.”
For now, Roan would continue riding directly north with the war party, biding his time until he could slip away.
Paused by the river, they watered their horses, ate a light lunch, and moved out across the plains, which were flat and packed hard.
The weather began to change as the mountains loomed larger in the distance. First it was a cold breeze slipping through gaps in his clothing, but swiftly became an icy wind, blowing hard enough to make him shiver. He pulled the cloak that was tied to his reins free and wrapped it around his shoulders.
Snow began to fall. The edges of the river were frozen. Then the middle, the entire
body of water crusted with ice that looked thick enough to walk upon. Roan licked his lips, eyeing the river. Would it really be that simple? Could he just walk across? Even the forest looked less…tangled, with wide gaps between the trees.
Gareth cruised over to him, smiling. His eyes met Roan’s and there was no awkwardness there. Thank the gods, Roan thought. “The northerners must be mad to live in a place like this,” he said. “Their skin must be thicker than ours, don’t you think?” Roan couldn’t help but to agree. Though he was pleased to see the easygoing smile back in its place on the prince’s face, something about it wasn’t quite right, like he’d used a quill and some ink to draw it on.
“The Southroners would’ve already retreated,” Roan said. “They are not built for such weather.” And neither am I, which is one of many reasons I’ll be going west.
“You speak of the southerners as if you are not one of them,” Gareth noted.
“As I’ve said, I’m only half-Southroner,” Roan said, mentally berating himself for his loose tongue.
“Hmm, I remember now. Something about a western father, right?”
Roan froze, pretending the question meant nothing to him, that he was simply mesmerized by the sheer size of the monstrous peaks rising before them. The mountains were a mix of black, green, and white. The green was at the bottom, the black in the middle, and only white at their heights, capped with snow. He was cold now—he couldn’t imagine what the temperature must feel like atop the cliffs.
“Impressive, aye?” Gareth said, noticing his wide eyes. Roan was glad the prince had changed the subject.
“Raider’s Pass cuts between the mountains, right?” Roan asked.
“Aye. The river has created a thin canyon. There’s a path along the river, but it’s rocky and difficult. Years ago, when the north and the west were still willing to trade, the pass was ruled by bands of raiders who ransacked the numerous caravans and barges that made the trek between the kingdoms.”