Crush the King

by Jennifer Estep

  On the other side of the plaza, Paloma swung her mace at every magier she could reach, punching the spikes into first one body, then another. My friend was easily holding her own, so I turned my attention back to my enemy.

  Ricardo feinted and lashed out with one of his knives, trying to catch me off guard, but I whirled to the side and knocked that blade out of his hand. The knife tumbled end over end along the cobblestones, shooting off a few weak silver sparks before it landed in a pile of dirty rags.

  Ricardo snarled again and swiped out with his other knife, but I knocked that one away as well, and it spun to a stop near Lena’s feet. The girl was hugging the closest wall, trying to stay out of the wild, deadly melee.

  Lena backed away, but Ricardo darted forward, grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and hooked an arm around her neck. Fire exploded on his fingertips again, and he held the burning ball close to Lena’s face. She shrieked and tried to pull away, but she couldn’t break his tight hold.

  “Stop!” he barked. “Everyone stop right now!”

  His voice boomed through the plaza, and everyone actually listened to him.

  Paloma had already killed four of the magiers, and she had her mace raised to take out a fifth one, but she slowly lowered the weapon to her side. The remaining magiers lowered their swords as well and backed away from her.

  Ricardo glanced at Paloma and the other magiers, making sure they weren’t going to move, then looked at me again. He grinned and took a step back, dragging Lena along with him. Then another step, then another.

  The bastard was using the girl as a human shield. The fight hadn’t gone his way, and now he was going to run, just like that fat rat I’d seen scurrying through the garbage earlier.

  I snapped up my sword and moved forward. He wasn’t getting away.

  Ricardo stopped and brandished his fire at Lena again. “What the fuck are you doing? Stop! Or the girl dies!”

  I shrugged. “Go ahead. Kill her. I don’t care.”

  Lena’s eyes bulged, and the scent of her sour, nervous sweat filled my nose.

  “What do you mean, you don’t care?” Ricardo asked. “I saw your face after I hit her. You didn’t like my disciplining her.”

  “That wasn’t discipline—that was cruelty, plain and simple. And no, I didn’t like seeing it.” I stared him down. “But just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean that I won’t do it in order to protect myself and my kingdom.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re really going to let me kill the girl?”

  I shrugged again. “That girl led me into a trap and was more than willing to trade my life for whatever gold you’d promised her. So go ahead. Melt her face off if you like. If she has to die so that I can get to you, then so be it.”

  Lena gasped at my harsh tone, and fear filled her face.

  “You’re bluffing,” Ricardo hissed. “We’ve all heard of Queen Everleigh and her great heroics to save Bellona from the evil Mortan empire. We all know that you’re far too noble to let me murder this girl right in front of you.”

  I laughed, the sound even harsher than my words had been. “I’m not that noble—or stupid. Even if I was, you’re forgetting something important.”

  “What?” he growled.

  I gave him a razor-thin smile. “I told you before. I don’t need my sword to destroy your magic.”

  Before he could react, I snapped up my left hand and threw my immunity at him.

  Admittedly, my power wasn’t very impressive in a visual sense, since it was more like a blast of cold wind than the hot, tangible flames still burning in Ricardo’s palm. But it slammed into him like a tidal wave, snuffing out his fire and knocking both him and Lena down.

  Paloma roared again, hefted her mace high, and attacked the remaining magiers, while I focused on Ricardo and Lena, who were rolling around on the ground.

  “You bastard!” Lena shrieked, scrambling up onto her knees and drawing her fist back to punch him. “You were going to kill me to save yourself—”

  Ricardo drew another knife out of the folds of his cloak, whipped it up, and slashed it across her throat. Lena let out a choked scream and toppled over onto her side. She clamped her hands around her neck, but blood gushed out from between her fingers.

  So much blood—too much blood.

  Lena stretched up one of her hands, silently begging me to help her, but there was nothing I could do. A few seconds later, her outstretched hand dropped to the ground, while her other hand slipped off her neck and landed in the blood that was rapidly pooling underneath her body. She didn’t move after that.

  Ricardo scrambled to his feet and darted toward the alley, trying to escape, but I surged forward and sliced my sword across the back of his thigh, opening up a deep cut. He screamed and stumbled sideways. His boots slipped on some broken glass, and he hit one of the metal trash bins, bounced off, and landed on a pile of boards. The rotten wood snapped like matchsticks under his weight, and he ended up on his ass in the middle of the splintered debris.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Paloma had killed the last of the magiers, and she came over to stand beside me.

  I focused on Ricardo again. “You treacherous bastard. You didn’t have to kill that girl. She was working for you.”

  Ricardo let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “Please. Lena would have stabbed me in the back the second she got the chance. She wanted all the gold we were going to get for this job. So did everyone else. It was just a matter of time before she and the others started plotting against me.” He shrugged, as though the magiers’ collective greed mattered as little to him as the girl’s life had. “So, yes, I did have to kill her before she tried to kill me.”

  Maybe Xenia was right. Maybe my Bellonan gladiator heritage had made me more barbarian than queen, because his twisted logic actually made perfect sense to me. So many people had tried to murder me over the past year that I could easily understand—and even appreciate—the idea of killing someone before they tried to kill you.

  “Well, you won’t be hurting anyone else.” I stabbed my sword at him. “Get on your feet. Now. You’re going to tell me who you’re working for and what they want with me.”

  Ricardo looked at Paloma, who casually propped her mace on her shoulder, even though drops of blood and bits of gore were still dripping off the sharp spikes and splattering onto the ground. The magier blanched and turned his attention back to me.

  For a moment, I thought he was going to do the smart thing and surrender. Then his eyes narrowed, another sneer twisted his face, and the caustic stench of his magic filled the air again. Ricardo feinted and swiped out with his knife, as though he were going to cut me, even as he lifted his other hand to blast me in the face with his fire.

  I was expecting the sneak attack, and I slapped his knife away with my sword. Then I dropped to one knee, surged forward, and slammed my left hand down onto his chest.

  The second my palm touched his body, I sent my immunity shooting outward, as though it were a giant, invisible fist that I was hammering straight into him. The red-hot flames crackling on his hand immediately snuffed out, but I was angry, so I hit him with my immunity again, this time focusing on the fire, the magic, burning deep inside his body. Ricardo screamed with pain and lashed out with his inner fire, trying to scorch through my cold, hard power and char it to ash, along with the rest of me.

  He was strong in his magic—but he wasn’t stronger than me.

  I hammered him with my immunity again. And again, and again, until the fire burning in his veins, in the very center of his black heart, started to crack and splinter. Ricardo screamed again and started beating at me with his fists, desperate to escape. He managed to hit me in the chest a few times, but the hard, heavy blows just fueled my own anger. I reached for even more of my power, even more of that icy rage deep inside me, and slammed another burst of magic into him, stronger than all the others.

  CRACK!

  That one note boomed in my ears like a thunderclap, maki
ng me flinch, although Ricardo and Paloma didn’t seem to hear it. In that instant, I felt something inside the magier just . . . shatter, like his body was made of delicate glass that I’d just punched to pieces.

  I glanced down, half expecting to see blood come gushing out of his chest, but my hand was still pressing down on his heart, and there was no blood or visible injury.

  Ricardo looked up at me, gasping for breath. “What . . . have you . . . done?”

  I let go of my immunity and yanked my hand off his chest, but it was too late. He pitched backward onto the ground, as though all his strength had suddenly deserted him, and his arms and legs started convulsing. The violent tremors lasted for about ten seconds before they abruptly stopped.

  Ricardo’s head lolled to the side, his topaz eyes frozen open in pain and fear, and a thin trickle of blood oozed out of his nose.

  The magier was dead.

  Chapter Four

  I let out a tense breath, dropped my hand to my side, and sat back on my heels, still stunned by what I’d just done.

  Ricardo’s chest was whole and unbroken, with no visible injury, although blood kept dribbling out of his nose. But I could see one thing very clearly—the outline of my hand in the fabric of his black tunic, right over his heart.

  I hadn’t meant to kill the magier. At least, not before I’d gotten some answers about who he was working for. No, I had only wanted to douse Ricardo’s fire to keep him from burning me, but I’d gone too far, and I’d killed him. And not with my sword.

  With my magic.

  I glanced down at my hand. Even now the invisible strength of my immunity crackled along my fingertips, as though it were a living weapon that was ready—eager—to be used again. I let out another breath and curled my hand into a tight fist. That was the only way I could pretend it wasn’t trembling, along with the rest of me.

  Paloma crouched down and studied Ricardo’s body. “What did you do to him?”

  I clenched my fingers into an even tighter fist, still trying to stop that damn trembling. “I think that I . . . crushed his magic . . . with my immunity.”

  Paloma heard the tremor in my voice, and she gave me a curious look. “I thought your immunity only let you dampen someone’s magic for a few seconds, not completely destroy their power. And I didn’t know destroying someone’s magic would actually kill their physical body too.”

  “Me neither,” I whispered, my fingers still trembling. “Me neither.”

  Paloma grinned and clapped me on the shoulder, almost knocking me over. “Well, good for you for figuring out a new way to kill people. I’m impressed, Evie. And a little jealous.”

  The ogre face on her neck also grinned at me, heartily approving of this new, lethal skill that I seemed to have.

  Paloma stared at the dead bodies sprawled across the plaza. “No blond hair, no purple eyes. None of these magiers look like Maeven. Do you think they were related to her? More members of the Bastard Brigade?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see if we can find anything that tells us who they were.”

  Paloma moved over to the other side of the plaza and started rifling through one of the dead magiers’ pockets. I scooted forward and did the same thing to Ricardo, since he was the closest one to me.

  Ricardo had certainly been fond of knives. In addition to the three blades he’d pulled on me, I found two more tucked into a belt, at the small of his back. All the knives were perfectly balanced, with razor-sharp edges, but no crests or symbols adorned them, and no metal-master marks were stamped into the blades. Still, I laid them aside to take with me. Perhaps Serilda or Cho would see some clue in the weapons.

  Next, I searched through the pockets stitched inside Ricardo’s black cloak, as well as the ones in his leggings, but I only found a few gold crowns and other coins. I set those aside too. Money was money, after all.

  I glanced at Paloma. “Find anything?”

  She shook her head. “Just weapons and money. I’ll keep looking.”

  Paloma and I moved from one dead body to the next, but we only found more weapons and money. None of the magiers was carrying anything personal that would identify them. Then again, assassins rarely left behind obvious clues.

  Disgusted, I tossed a few more coins onto the pile I’d made, then looked out over the plaza again. There was one person we hadn’t searched yet—Lena.

  Paloma was busy with another body, so I went over and crouched down next to the dead girl.

  Lena’s eyes were still open, her dark brown gaze fixed and glassy in death, and the deep cut on her neck looked like a crooked, scarlet smile carved into her skin. The coppery stench of her blood, along with the growing rot of her death, overpowered the garbage in the plaza, and I had to choke down the bile that rose in my throat.

  I didn’t mourn her passing—after all, Lena had led me into this trap—but sorrow still filled me as I stared at her young, pretty features. She had given me hope that another Blair was still alive—hope that was now as dead as she was.

  My sorrow faded, washed away by waves of anger, shame, and embarrassment. I should have known better. I should have known the rumor was too good to be true. I should have realized that it was a bloody trap right from the start. But instead, I’d foolishly let myself hope, and now I had nothing but a sick, roiling stomach and an empty, aching space in my heart.

  “Evie?” Paloma asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I growled.

  I pushed my feelings aside, leaned forward, and rifled through Lena’s pockets the same way I had Ricardo’s. She also had several knives, but they were nothing special, so I tossed them onto the weapons pile. I moved on to the pockets in her leggings and other layers of clothing, but I didn’t find anything inside them, not even a few coins.

  Frustration filled me, and I sat back on my heels. I was about to give up when I noticed a small lump on Lena’s chest, one that was somehow sticking up through her grubby clothes.

  Curious, I leaned forward again and probed the lump with my fingers. At first I thought it was a button, but it seemed too large for that, so I kept pressing on and around the lump. Lena was wearing something underneath her clothes.

  Even though her neck was a cut, bloody mess, I hooked my fingers into the tops of her tunics and yanked them all down. A thin gold chain glimmered around her throat. I fished it out of the thick, sticky blood that covered her skin, drew it up over her head, and held it out where I could see it.

  A gold pendant dangled from the end of the chain.

  At first glance, the pendant seemed to be a simple round coin, but a closer look revealed that it was stamped on both sides. One side featured two crisscrossed knives that resembled Ricardo’s and Lena’s weapons. The symbol seemed vaguely familiar, although I couldn’t remember when or where I had seen it before, so I flipped over the pendant.

  A woman’s face was stamped on the other side. A common enough symbol, except for one thing—the woman’s eyes and mouth were all shaped like tiny coins.

  I was so shocked that I almost dropped the pendant. I definitely recognized this symbol, although I wished I didn’t. A woman with two coins for her eyes and a single coin for her mouth was the crest of the Fortuna Mint.

  “Oh, bloody . . .” My voice trailed off, and I couldn’t even finish the curse hanging on my lips.

  Most people viewed the Fortuna Mint as a bank, since the Mint printed and accepted coins and currencies from various kingdoms, while other folks stored precious jewelry, artwork, and heirlooms in its supposedly impenetrable vaults. The Mint also dealt in rarities and hosted lavish auctions where everything from hard-to-find antiquities to exotic spices to unusual creatures was sold to the highest bidder.

  The Fortuna Mint was run by the DiLucri family, as it had been ever since its founding centuries ago. In many ways, the DiLucris were an unofficial royal family who wielded their collective wealth and power to its fullest extent, influencing everyone from common merchants to lords and ladies to kings and q
ueens.

  I looked at the pendant again, then down at Lena, then over at Ricardo and the rest of the bodies. They weren’t members of the Bastard Brigade. No, the dead magiers had worked for the DiLucris.

  Intimidation, kidnapping, extortion, assassination. The DiLucris would quietly help you with all that and more, but they were most famous—or rather infamous—for their bounty hunters. The DiLucris trained and employed a legion of bounty hunters to collect on outstanding debts owed to their Mint, as well as procure rarities and carry out special missions. You could run, but you couldn’t hide for long from the bounty hunters—or geldjagers, as they were also known.

  I’d had the misfortune to encounter some geldjagers before, so I knew exactly how skilled and vicious they were and that many of them wore small gold-coin pendants to prove their identities.

  Lena had said that her group had been sent to Svalin to torture whomever fell into their trap for information, but once Ricardo had realized who I was, he’d wanted to kidnap me instead. The thought of being casually sold from one horrible person to another like a purloined painting or a stolen necklace filled me with disgust, but I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  After all, it had almost happened to me before.

  Oh, yes, the geldjagers had definitely been working for the DiLucris, and I couldn’t help but think they were working for the Mortan king as well. I could imagine the king ordering me to be brought in alive just so he could have the pleasure—and certainty—of finally murdering me himself.

  The DiLucris charged a high price for their geldjagers, but the Mortan king could easily afford their exorbitant fees. Or perhaps he’d promised the DiLucris something else. Contracts with Mortan merchants, fertile farmlands, or maybe even some noble title and a place in his palace. Or perhaps the DiLucris were breaking with their tradition of supposed neutrality and aligning themselves with the Mortans outright.

  But all that really mattered was who Ricardo had wanted to deliver me to. The DiLucris, so they could fulfill their contract with the Mortans? Or perhaps Ricardo had been thinking about cutting the DiLucris out of the deal and taking me directly to the Mortan king. Either way, the DiLucris working for or with the Mortans was a disturbing development.