The Beauty of Darkness

by Mary E. Pearson

  I went to the window and threw open the shutter, but there was no ledge for escape. I looked down to a balcony directly beneath the window—it was a twenty-foot drop onto hard stone, but I couldn’t see any other option. I eased myself out, hanging from the window by my fingertips, then let go. I rolled with the fall, but the impact still sent splitting pain up my leg. I fled, limping as I ran, my route now a wild and haphazard one, darting into rooms, hallways, redirecting my steps when I heard the pounding of footsteps in pursuit. I raced down a dark servant’s stairway, and then an empty hall, the shouts getting weaker, their search still confined to the upper floors. I was at the back of the citadelle, heading down a long dark passage for the rarely used servant’s entrance that Pauline and I had escaped through. I had just slid the latch open when I heard a metallic chink, and I spun toward the sound. A strange keening whir filled the air and then a loud thunk, thunk, thunk.

  A hot jolt exploded in my arm. My vision flashed with pain so bright I couldn’t focus. When I tried to pull away, my breaths shuddered in my chest. I couldn’t move. I looked to my left. Two long iron bolts were embedded high in the door, but a third had pinned my hand to the wood, piercing the center of my palm. Blood dripped to the floor. I heard footsteps and tried frantically to pull the bolt loose, but the least movement sent sickening pain convulsing through me. The footsteps grew louder, closer. I looked up and saw the silhouette of a figure walking leisurely toward me. I recognized the swagger. My knife lay on the floor at my feet. I drew my sword, a pathetic gesture, because I knew I couldn’t fight with one hand pinned to the door. His face came into view.

  Malich.

  A crossbow unlike any I had ever seen dangled from one of his hands. I trembled with pain as he drew closer. Every sound was amplifed, his footsteps, the tip of my sword scraping the floor, my own breath wheezing in my throat.

  “So nice to run into you, Princess,” he said. “I understand Kaden is here too. I never should have let him slip away from me that day when we fought on the terrace.”

  The smug grin. The one I’d sworn he would pay for.

  “I wish I could say it was nice to see you too, Malich.” I lifted my sword as a threat, but even that small movement magnified the painful stab in my hand. I tried to mask my agony.

  He easily knocked my sword away with his crossbow, sending it clattering across the room. The jerking twist of my body sent blinding jolts shooting up my arm, and I couldn’t restrain a scream. He grabbed my free hand and pressed his body against mine.

  “Please,” I said. “My brothers—”

  “Just the way I prefer you, Princess, begging and with both of your hands restrained.” His face still bore the lines of my attack, and his eyes glowed with vengeance. He leaned closer, and his free hand circled my throat. “The bolts are courtesy of the Komizar. He’s sorry he couldn’t be here to deliver them himself. Sadly, you must settle for me.” His hand slid from my throat to my breast. “And after I’m finished with you, I’ll carve up your face with marks like the ones you gave me. He doesn’t care what you look like when I hand you over.”

  His grin widened and that was all I could see, all I could feel, the assured expression that said he owned the world. It was a grin that churned memories to the surface. I saw my brother weeping. I saw the arrow in Greta’s throat. I saw a baby’s lace cap burning and curling into ash. That was easy, he had boasted. Killing her was easy.

  His breaths were heavy in my ear as his hand slid lower, fumbling with my belt, jerking at the buttons of my trousers. Easy. I felt the crunch of bone as I forced my pinned hand to twist, turn, grab hold of the bolt. Blood rushed down my arm. Groans shuddered up from my throat like animal sounds, thick and wild. I used the pain the way a fire consumes fuel, burning hotter and hotter, and with my hand gripped around the bolt, I forced my arm to shove against it, loosening it. My fingers burned like they’d been set ablaze, the iron bolt becoming rage in my hand, and I pulled, loosening it further, my groans only adding to Malich’s satisfaction. His eyes gleamed, looking into mine as if he already knew where he would carve the lines. Easy.

  “No fainting on me now, Princess,” he said as he jerked the last button of my trousers free. His hand slid beneath the leather, down along my hip, his grin widening. “I keep my promises, and I told the Komizar that you would suffer.”

  I yanked on the bolt, twisting it as it sprang free, the sudden release adding velocity to my swing, and it plunged into Malich’s neck, the pointed end emerging through the other side. His eyes widened.

  “And I keep my promises too,” I said.

  His lips parted as if to say something. He was unable to speak, but I saw it in his eyes. For a few glorious seconds, he knew—he was a dead man, and it was by my hand. While he could still hear me, I whispered, “I hate that it feels so good and so easy to kill you, Malich. Rest assured I will never beg you for anything ever again.” I pulled the bolt free and blood spurted from his neck before he thudded to the ground. Dead.

  I stared at his crumpled body, the blood running slowly from his neck, trickling into lazy red rivers across the cobbled floor. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

  His grin was gone.

  It was then that a thunder of footsteps closed in from all sides. Six guards surrounded me—again ones I didn’t recognize. The Watch Captain stood among them. He was the member of the cabinet who oversaw the citadelle guards.

  He looked down at Malich’s body with recognition and shook his head.

  A nauseous wave rushed through me. “Not you too,” I said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Captain, don’t do this,” I pleaded.

  “Believe me, Princess, if I could reverse time, I would, but I’m in much too deep to turn back now.”

  “It’s not too late! You could still save my brothers! You could—”

  “Take her.”

  I stepped forward and swung, the bolt still in my hand, but my knees gave way and I hit the floor.

  Two guards scooped me up by my arms, and another pulled the bolt free. Blood spurted, and my head swam as they dragged me. I tried to keep track of where they were taking me, but all I saw were blurred shapes swirling in front of me. Stop the bleeding, Lia. But with their hands clamped on my arms, there was no chance of that. Instead I pleaded to their loyalties, trying to convince them that the Watch Captain was the vilest of traitors. Even my words seemed slurred, distant, and one of the guards repeatedly told me to shut up, but I didn’t stop. He finally cracked me in the jaw. The soft flesh on the inside of my cheek sliced into my teeth, and the salty tang of blood filled my mouth. The passageway faded in and out, and floor and ceiling spun into each other. But it was a word a guard muttered just before he threw me into a dark room, that slammed into me harder than his fist.

  Jabavé.

  There was a reason I hadn’t recognized the citadelle guards.

  They were Vendan.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Just a little farther, Lia.

  Hold on.

  Hold on for me.

  I smelled a river, glimpsed the weighty bowed pines of a forest, saw frosty breaths swirling the air above me, and heard the steady determined beat of boots crunching in snow.

  I felt warm lips brushing mine.

  Just a little farther.

  For me.

  My eyes drifted open—I wasn’t dead yet. The snowy world, the blinding whiteness, and the scent of pine vanished. Instead I was in a black windowless room, but I still felt the arms that had held me, the fingers that had brushed back strands of my hair, the chest that had been a warm wall against the cold, and I heard the voice that wouldn’t let me go.

  Keep your eyes on me. The fiery blue that had demanded I stay.

  I tried to focus, search the blackness. The cell was stuffy, the air as old as the walls themselves. It smelled of dirt and rot. I pulled my hand close to my stomach, pressing it tight to stop the bleeding, but the pressure sent a blinding stab through me.


  I sucked in air, forcing my lungs to breathe.

  I couldn’t accept that it was over.

  That there would be no word sent to save my brothers.

  That the traitors wouldn’t be exposed.

  That the Komizar had won.

  Seeing Malich dead was suddenly a very small victory. The satisfaction trickled away, like his blood across the floor. His death only gave me an ending—it didn’t give back what had been taken.

  The path here was a blur and I wasn’t sure where I was, but it wasn’t the citadelle. Maybe one of the outbuildings? Why would they chance dragging me out in the open when the citadelle prison had been only steps away? I didn’t think they had taken me as far as Piers Camp, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I tried to stand to search the room for something to use as a weapon, but my injured leg buckled under me, and my face slammed into the dirt floor. I lay there like a wounded animal. Do we understand each other at last? I choked back angy tears. No! I pushed with my one good hand, trying to get up. I’d thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, but I was wrong. I heard footsteps, muffled shouts, and squinted against the sudden bright light as the door swung open. More prisoners were flung inside, the door slammed, and the room plunged back into darkness.

  He is near my children,

  His lips brush my neck,

  His spittle wets my cheek,

  His caress crushes my breaths,

  More than swords,

  More than fists,

  My words frighten him.

  I see my end,

  But the words I have given you,

  I pray, those he cannot take.

  —Song of Venda

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  RAFE

  Only a few of us rode through the woods. The rest remained in town, dispersed so as not to attract attention—but ready. As we got closer to the cottage, I put my hand up, a wordless order for everyone to stop. They heard it too. An angry squalling. A cat perhaps, or—

  We broke into a gallop. As we neared, I spotted Kaden running from the woods toward the cottage. He saw us but kept running. “Pauline! Lia!” he yelled as he ran. We piled through the cottage door, only to find it empty—except for the howl of a baby. We all looked at the bed at the same time, and Kaden bent down, pulling a bundle from beneath it.

  “It’s Pauline’s,” he said as he cradled the baby in his arms. He pulled aside the blanket to make sure it wasn’t hurt. “She would never leave her baby like this.” And then, as if he’d finally registered our presence, he asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Before I could answer, Berdi and a young girl burst through the door. Berdi yelled warnings and threats before finally demanding the baby be handed over. It was pandemonium and confusion as questions were hurled until Orrin rushed in and said there were fresh horse tracks outside that weren’t ours.

  “Someone took them,” Kaden said. “She hid the baby beneath the bed so they wouldn’t take him too.”

  The girl with Berdi darted for the door. “I have to get to the abbey!”

  Both Kaden and Berdi yelled for her to stop, but she was already gone. I got on my horse and ran her down, unsure of her motives. She drew a knife to hold me off. That was when she told me about the notices.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  The three of us sat side by side, leaning against the stone wall. I imagined they stared into the black void, just as I did. I was grateful that I couldn’t see Pauline’s face as she recounted the betrayal. Her voice was still filled with disbelief and wobbled in a soft, dangerous way between misery and cold rage. Just when I thought she would break, a terrible quietness roared up in her, one that was feral and sharp and thirsty for revenge.

  Gwyneth told me that before they were taken, she had heard Pauline call her from the cottage porch. She had looked out the window, and when she saw the soldiers coming, she wrapped the baby in a blanket and laid him beneath the bed, where he wouldn’t be seen.

  Pauline’s voice turned thin and fearful again. “Kaden will find him. Don’t you think, Lia?”

  Gwyneth had already reassured her that Kaden would hear him crying when he returned from the mill. I’d started to add my own affirmation when Pauline reached out for my hand and felt the bloody mess of it. I groaned at her touch.

  “Dear gods, what happened?”

  We had embraced when they were thrown into the room, but in the darkness she hadn’t seen my hand.

  I had already explained my encounter with my father, the Chancellor, and the guards who dragged me here, but now I told them about my unfortunate encounter with Malich and the bolt.

  Pauline was horrified and immediately began tearing a strip from the bottom of her skirt for a bandage. Gwyneth stood and felt her way through the corners of the room, and when she had found a handful of cobwebs, she stumbled back toward me and wrapped them around my hand. Though the court physician would have disapproved highly of such kitchen remedies, it helped slow the steady ooze from my hand.

  “Was it hard?” Pauline asked. “To kill him?”

  “No,” I answered. It had been easy. Did that make me little more than an animal? That was what I felt like now, a knot of teeth and claws ready to kill anything that walked through the door.

  “How I wish I’d had a bolt in my hand when Mikael came and pointed us out.” Pauline mimicked his voice as she recounted his words again. “It was my duty to turn you in, he said. I’m a soldier, and you’re a wanted criminal of the kingdom. I had no other choice.” She tied off the bandage. “Duty! When I saw the magistrate toss him a bag of coin, Mikael shrugged, like he hadn’t known about the bounty.”

  “How did he know you’d be at the caretaker’s cottage?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid he knows me far better than I know him. I’m guessing he was the one who followed me to the inn and alerted the Chancellor. When he didn’t find me there, he thought of another place I might go. The cottage was where we used to—” She sighed and didn’t finish her thought. She didn’t need to.

  “And I was just the lucky bonus in the whole bargain,” Gwyneth said cheerfully. “Wait until the Chancellor finds out I’m involved. That should be ugly. I learned a long time ago how delightfully vicious he can be.” And then, for the first time, she opened up about Simone. Maybe when you’re about to die, secrets don’t seem so important to keep.

  She sighed with an air of disgust that I think was directed at herself. “I was nineteen when I met him. He was older, powerful, and showered me with attention. I found him charming, if you can believe that, but the truth is, even then I knew he was dangerous on some level. I thought it was exciting compared to my dreary life as a chambermaid in Graceport. He wore expensive clothes and spoke so properly, and it made me feel like I was somehow just as important as he was. I passed information on to him for almost a year. Because of the port, a lot of lords and wealthy merchants frequented the inn. It wasn’t until two patrons I had given him information about turned up dead in their beds that I grasped how dangerous he was. He told me they had become a liability. Everything that I had thought was exciting about him suddenly became terrifying.”

  She said by that point she was already pregnant. She made up a story for him that she’d found a job elsewhere and would have said or done anything to get the baby away from him. He didn’t try to stop her from leaving. He wasn’t happy about the child, and she was still afraid he might do something to her or the baby. She kept Simone for only a few months. She had run out of funds, had no one to turn to, and was worried the Chancellor might track her down. Passing through Terravin, she spotted an older couple who doted on some children in the square. She learned they were childless and followed them to a home that was neat and tidy. “They even had red geraniums in pots on their windowsill. I held Simone in my arms for two hours, staring at those flowers. I knew they’d make good parents.” She paused and I heard a swiping sound, like she was brushing tears from her cheeks. “After I left her there, I didn’t come back
to Terravin for over two years. I was still afraid someone would make the connection, but not a day went by that I didn’t think about her. They’re good people. We don’t ever talk about it—I guess they know I don’t want to—but they know who I am, and they make room in their lives for me. She’s a happy and sweet little girl. Nothing like me, thank the gods. Or him.” Her voice cracked as if she knew she might never see her daughter again. Hearing the steely Gwyneth break squeezed the air from my chest.

  “Stop!” I said. “We’ll get out of this.”

  “Damn right we will!” Pauline growled.

  Gwyneth and I sucked in startled breaths, then laughed. I pictured Pauline gripping a bolt in her fist with Mikael’s name engraved on it. Gwyneth reached out and held my good hand. I hung my other hand over Pauline’s shoulder and pulled her close. We leaned into one another, our arms tangled, forehead to cheek, chin to shoulder, tears and strength binding us.

  “We’ll get out of this,” I whispered again. And then we shared the silence, knowing what was coming.

  Gwyneth pulled away first, leaning back against the wall again. “What I can’t figure out is why we’re not all dead already. What are they waiting for?”

  “Confirmation,” I said. “The conclave is back in session, and someone who’s a deciding factor in this little conspiracy is otherwise occupied. Maybe the Royal Scholar.”

  “The conclave breaks for midday meal,” Pauline said.

  “Then we have until midday,” I replied.

  Or maybe longer if my backup plan worked out, but as every minute passed and I listened for the sound of the abbey bells ringing, I became more certain that plan had been thwarted too.

  My anger spiked. I should have stabbed the Komizar again. Carved him up like a holiday goose, then brought his head back skewered on a sword and showed it to the crowds as proof that I had no love for the tyrant.