His face went harder, every muscle in his expression drawing taut. Sammerin’s emotions sat so far beneath the surface of his expressions, his eyes always gentle, his voice always calm — even now. And yet…
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“I see it.” I gave him a knowing look and tapped a finger to the corner of my eye. “I see that there is more to this for you. But you don’t have to talk about it, or tell me what it is. Not unless you want to.”
I just wanted him to know that I saw. He spent so much of his time caring for others. He deserved to be seen, too.
He gave me a small smile that faded quickly. “Do you know how the Syrizen recruit?”
I shook my head.
“They don’t choose this. Not any of them. The Orders screens for a very specific, very rare set of magical skills, and if you have them, you become one. Yes, it’s considered an honor to be a Syrizen. They get money, power, respect. But…”
His voice trailed off, and we both looked at Eslyn, the scars where her eyes used to be now wrinkled in a perpetual wince of pain.
He didn’t need to finish: But look at all they give up.
A shudder ran up my spine. To think that when I came to Ara, I had been certain I was going to a world that was so much kinder than my own. Foolish.
Sammerin was silent for so long that I thought our conversation was over. But then he said, quietly, “A friend of mine was chosen, once. She was a little on the older side when they realized she had the skillset — just old enough for it to be a shock. She had wanted to leave the military, actually. But then the war happened…” He trailed off, his thumb tracing his lower lip in thought. His eyes didn’t leave Eslyn, and now I understood that he was seeing someone else in her place. “She was a painter, actually. Striking eyes.”
I reached over and placed my hand on Sammerin’s shoulder — the same wordless comfort that he would give me, when I spiraled in unspoken anxieties.
“It’s a battle worth fighting,” I murmured, then lifted my chin to the tray. “Keep yourself strong enough to face it.”
He gave me a weak smile, patted my hand, and finally reached for the food.
I did eventually manage to convince Sammerin to go get some rest, though he did so reluctantly. After he left, I stood at Eslyn’s bedside in the empty room, looking down at her. Reshaye slithered through my mind, both curious and revulsed. Eslyn’s mouth was closed and contorted in pain, but I could still hear those sounds of agony.
A thought occurred to me.
Could we help her? I asked Reshaye.
{No one can help her.}
I reached out, my fingers brushing her face. Then her temple.
I heard her, when no one else could. We both drew from the same deep pool of magic, even if in different ways. Didn’t that mean there was at least a chance I could do something for her that no one else would be able to?
{There are powers that are beyond you. There are even powers that are beyond me. She is already dead, like a withered leaf clinging to the vine. She is just waiting for one gust of wind.}
Still… I reached out with a single tendril of my mind, reaching into hers.
Deeper — and I nearly gasped.
There it was. It was impossible to miss. I felt the sickness, like an open wound, gushing blood. It was so noxious that everything in my magic recoiled from it. It was everywhere. Every drop of Eslyn’s mind and magic was consumed with it.
Even if she lives now, she’ll wish she hadn’t, Sammerin had said, and now I understood. There was nothing of Eslyn left, anymore.
I pulled back, shaken.
I so wanted to help her. She deserved that — or at least deserved to die in a better way than this. But Reshaye was right. This sickness overwhelmed her, eating her alive from the inside out.
She was already dead.
The next day, I returned to find Sammerin sagging in the chair beside Eslyn’s bed, looking thoroughly exhausted. Ariadnea was kneeling beside her, forehead pressed against her friend’s shoulder. Sammerin looked to me and simply shook his head. She was gone.
I remained at Sammerin’s side as they covered the body. Several other Syrizen came to take Eslyn away. Nura came, too, watching the scene unfold, her face still as ice.
“Well,” she said, in the hallway, “this, at least, could solve some of your problems with the Threllians.”
I shot Nura a confused look.
“Eslyn was with us in Threll,” she clarified. “She was among those responsible for the attack on the Mikov estate. The Zorokovs might accept her death as justice.”
She said this so nonchalantly. It was like the woman who had been so shaken by Eslyn’s illness days ago no longer existed. All while the body was barely cold. It made me want to retch.
“What about her family?” I asked.
“Syrizen forsake all other ties when they become what they are. No one is waiting for her.”
Every angle of Sammerin’s face went hard, as if this statement reviled him.
Someone is waiting for her, I thought. They’ll just never get her.
“It does not matter,” I said. “The Zorokovs would see it as an insult, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because they want—”
I stopped short.
Nura and Sammerin both looked back at me.
“What?” Nura said, at last. “You? That’s what you were going to say?”
I felt sick to my stomach. I wished I hadn’t even had the thought. Yet, the idea burrowed into my mind and wouldn’t let go.
It wouldn’t be perfect. It might not even be good. But how could I ignore any possible solution, when so many lives hung in the balance?
“Sammerin,” I said. “I have a question for you.”
And Sammerin nodded, his face pinched with a resigned dread that told me he already knew what I was about to ask.
I didn’t want Sammerin to do this.
I told him so, when I asked him if it was possible. Let us find someone else with a mastery of flesh to do it. Or let us find some other fresh body. Yes, the idea had come to me here, at Eslyn’s deathbed, but that didn’t mean that it had to be executed under these circumstances.
Sammerin had given me this pitying look, like the proposal was that of an innocent child. His gifts were incredibly rare — it would take weeks, potentially, to get someone else with his skills in Korvius. Eslyn was the right age, shape, size. The stars had aligned, he told me, flatly. We might as well take advantage.
I was grateful that the corpse had not yet begun to smell. It was one less thing to find horrifying as we hacked off Eslyn’s head at the throat. Ariadnea helped us do it, to my horror. When Sammerin and I tried to tell her that we didn’t need — didn’t want — her help with this, she merely gave us a flat, eyeless stare and said, “The Syrizen have given her body to this purpose. It’s my job to do it.”
It shouldn’t be, I would have said, but Ariadnea turned away before I could argue further. Still, I felt her presence acutely as we cut off Eslyn’s head, a process that took agonizingly longer than I would have expected it to. Then Sammerin took Eslyn’s decapitated head, and began to — there was no other way to describe it — sculpt it.
I wondered if I would ever stop finding Sammerin’s abilities shocking. By now, I had watched him heal wounds and illnesses and broken bones more times than I could count. This, though, was something else completely. Sammerin placed his hands on either side of Eslyn’s face, and her flesh responded to him as if it were nothing but clay. He started with the bones, which produced terrible cracking and grinding noises that even made Ariadnea flinch. First the jaw, which he made longer and softer. Then the cheekbones — raised — and the eye sockets — further set apart. The nose, he made flatter and wider. And then, the muscle and fat in her face shifted, like thousands of ants were crawling beneath her skin, as he rearranged muscle.
Finally, he pulled out several small bottles th
at contained thin, greenish liquid.
“The coloring won’t be perfect,” he said. “That’s harder for me to change. But it will be good enough to pass.”
Sammerin brushed the liquid over parts of Eslyn’s face, leaving others untouched. And then he placed his hands on her again, closed his eyes, and slowly, the color began to sap from her skin, and chunks of her hair — leaving behind patches of white hair and grayish, colorless flesh.
The grayish, colorless flesh of a dead Fragmented Valtain.
The whole process took nearly two hours. When he was done, Sammerin gently set the head down on the table and looked at me. Then it. Then me.
“I think,” he said, “it is passable.”
It was better than passable. I was looking at my own corpse. Certainly, someone who had never seen me before with their own eyes would have no reason to question it.
“It’s…good,” I said, though giving it any compliment seemed… strange. Sammerin himself stared at it not with pride but disgust. I hoped that however Ariadnea “saw” the world spared her from how we had defiled her friend.
But her head tilted towards it. “The eyes,” she grunted. “You’ll have to do something about that.”
It was the only thing missing.
“I can,” I said, and reached out to Eslyn’s smooth, eyeless sockets. When I touched them, the flesh began to rot beneath my fingertips, flesh shriveling. When I pulled my hands away, the head was left with two empty black pits for eyes, rotted out in decay — as if “my” eyes had been pried out before death, and the remaining ruined flesh left for the maggots.
The Zorokovs would appreciate the extra cruelty. Removed eyes were an especially favored punishment of the Threllian Lords.
We all stared at it.
“I think that is enough,” I said.
Enough. What a word. It was such an imperfect plan. Enough to buy the slaves in Threll some time. Enough to appease the Zorokovs, if only temporarily. It was better than the plan that I had three days ago, which was to say, no plan at all. Something was better than nothing. This one act might save the lives of dozens of slaves, or more.
Still. I felt sick when we began to return to our room. Sammerin’s silence was not his typical thoughtful quiet, but one heavy with shame. I cast him a sidelong look as we walked together, remembering our discussion from weeks ago — how he had sounded as he told me how difficult it had been to claw his way out of using his gifts for terrible things.
Was this a terrible thing?
“Thank you, Sammerin,” I said, quietly. “I’m—I’m sorry you had to do that.”
Sammerin gave me a tight, humorless smile. “At least she was already dead.”
I failed to find this especially comforting. And something told me that Sammerin didn’t, either.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Max
My back hurt. And my legs. And my left arm, which I’d pulled something vicious the day before. I hurt more or less everywhere.
But none of those aches and pains measured up at all to the one that pounded on the inside of my skull as I watched Zeryth, wearing a crown and sitting at what used to be my father’s desk, lean back in his chair and smile.
It was a grotesque expression, absent of Zeryth’s usual lazy charm. Actually, everything about the way Zeryth looked right now seemed grotesque, like a poor mimicry. He had lost a shocking amount of weight since I’d last seen him, and his eyes were so dark that for a split second I had wondered whether he’d developed a sudden affinity for kohl.
I’d needed to hide my shock when I walked into the room. At the sight, Eomara’s words echoed in my mind: Imagine, giving up so much of yourself to drag someone back down with you.
“I have to admit,” he said, “as much as you and I have had our personal differences, no one can deny that you’re good at what you do.”
What I do. How those three words make me want to fucking retch. What was that, exactly? Fighting? Killing? Warfare?
My teeth gritted. “Have,” I said, drily.
“Hm?”
“Have our personal differences. I noticed that you used the incorrect past tense. Nothing past about it.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. There was only so much self-control I could master. My poor social graces, and all.
Zeryth’s expression froze, a shock of anger passing over his face. Then it relaxed, and he let out a low chuckle. “Ah, you got me.”
He stood and turned to the map behind his desk, arms crossed over his chest.
“So then. It appears that despite your excellent military prowess, we have a significant problem. Morwood.”
He stretched out the word — Moooor-wood.
“It’s an inconvenience,” I said.
Zeryth chuckled. “An inconvenience, he says.” He peered back to me. “How much effort you’ve put into doing this gently, General Farlione. Into doing this kindly. You and Tisaanah and your sweet, bloodless war.”
Bloodless? Bloodless? Tell that to all the people I had killed over these last weeks. Tell that to the families of the soldiers I’d buried. Tell that to Moth, who I still hadn’t seen sleep since he killed for the first time.
Fucking bloodless. Sure.
My words came out between tight teeth. “The more people I kill just leaves fewer to witness your divine rule, my illustrious King.”
Fury cracked across Zeryth’s face like lightning, surging wildly before he tethered it again.
“You can be coy, but do you ever stop to think that you’ll just end up killing more of them this way? Death to Ara by a thousand little cuts, rather than just slicing off the infection in one go. Do you think this would get better, after another year or two or four of drawn out warfare, General Farlione?” A cruel spark glinted in his eye. “You understood that in Sarlazai, didn’t you? You know, it’s a shame you never got to see the argument Nura made for you in those trials. She was brilliant. Showed all of Ara exactly how merciful it was to take such decisive measures. One show of strength, one sacrifice, and a million lives were saved.”
My hands were folded in my lap, clenched so tight my knuckles were white.
“Sarlazai never should have happened. And I’ll never let something like that happen again.”
“I want the Capital back, Maxantarius. I want it back soon.”
“We don’t have the forces to do that. Aviness still has strong alliances guarding the city.”
Zeryth gave me a cold stare. “Do not talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“I—”
“We have enough power to do this.”
“Even Reshaye can’t—”
“It can’t? It has.” He leaned across the table, and all at once, the remnants of his smooth demeanor disappeared. Left beneath was only demented rage. “And if the stories I heard about you are true, then we certainly have enough power to take it back. Don’t tell me that we aren’t strong enough. I could tear that city to the fucking ground if I wanted to, couldn’t I?”
“I can’t give you a victory based on rumors you heard from a few Threllians,” I said, calmly, “and no matter what you want to believe, we can’t hinge it on Reshaye alone, either. We need to take Morwood out first.”
For a moment, Zeryth looked so unhinged that I thought he might actually strike me. Then he straightened, and the anger left him as suddenly as it had surged.
“Morwood,” he muttered. “Then Istra. Then Envaline. On, and on, and on.”
He turned back to the map. Absentmindedly, he brushed the coronet at his brow, as if checking to see whether it was still there.
My gaze fell to the desk. It was covered with papers — letters, books, maps, invoices, plans. Off in one corner, I saw a pile of books that made me do a double-take. I recognized them. Journals, left by each king to their successor and meant for the eyes of subsequent rulers alone. The top one was open, half-read.
Zeryth would have had to take these with him when he fled the Palace. Zeryth, of all people, priz
ed the wisdom of former kings enough to take it with him, and study it.
I looked back to him. And there, briefly, I caught a glimpse of something that looked downright odd on the face of this man that I’d always known to be haughty and selfish. Something tired and worried and… worn down.
“Why are you doing this?”
The question slipped out before I could stop it. Zeryth’s gaze snapped to me, already angry, as if expecting to see snide sarcasm on my face. But there wasn’t any. I really wanted to know. Zeryth had already been arguably the most powerful man in Ara. Why take the extra step? Knowing that it could so easily end in his downfall?
His lip curled. “I thought you’d already decided you knew the answer to that question. Because I’m— what are the words you would use? A power-hungry bastard drunk on his own ego?”
That did sound like the sort of thing I would say.
“I’m not about to argue with that,” I said. “But…”
“But?”
I gestured to the map, to all the little red pins over it. “All this, Zeryth? For what?”
Zeryth let out a scoff. “For what,” he echoed, as if this were a ridiculous thing to say. He turned to me. “You were born into one of the most powerful families in Ara, Lord Farlione. Secondborn son, yes, but that didn’t change the fact that the minute you were yanked from between your mother’s legs, half the world was shoved into your slimy little hands. Ara was made for people like you. But while your mother was giving birth in a bed of velvet surrounded by midwives, mine was heaving away in an alleyway behind a brothel, alone. And Ara might have looked beautiful from above, but from beneath, the underside was fucking filthy. So of course you, Max, would look at this all and think, ‘Why bother?’”
His eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you ask Tisaanah that question? I think she might understand. What’s the point of going this far? What’s the point of doing it unless I go this far?” Then he looked to the map and went silent. He was so tense that I could see the line of his shoulders trembling.
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 22