by Rj Barker
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orbitshortfiction.com
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by RJ Barker
Excerpt from Mageborn copyright © 2017 by Stephen Aryan
Excerpt from Spellslinger copyright © 2017 by Sebastien de Castell
Cover design by Tom Sanderson
Cover image by Trevillion
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2018
First Edition: August 2018
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937461
ISBNs: 978-0-316-46658-5 (paperback), 978-0-316-46659-2 (ebook)
E3-20180615-JV-PC
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Killing
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Interlude
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Interlude
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Interlude
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Interlude
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Interlude
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Interlude
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Interlude
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Interlude
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Last Priest of Xus
Afterword and Acknowledgements
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of Mageborn
A Preview of Spellslinger
By RJ Barker
Praise for The Wounded Kingdom
Orbit Newsletter
For my very patient friend, Matt Broom—thank you for letting me talk at you
A Killing
He had come in to Maniyadoc through the night soil drain. Filth coated his clothes and skin but it was worth it; no guard worth his salt would bother watching a night soil drain. From there he climbed into a shovelling room, a curious one, far taller than it was wide, and he could not understand why that would be. He did not think about it too much. He had seen many odd things among the blessed of the Tired Lands, many things that made no sense, things done simply because they could be, so he did not question it. From the shovelling room he passed through a door. A servant found him quickly enough, drawn by the stink of his filthy clothes. The man’s diligence was rewarded with a quick death and filthy clothes were exchanged for the servant’s clean ones.
He moved into the castle.
Down corridors where his footsteps were absorbed by thick carpet.
It was difficult for him not to stare. Not to wander wide-eyed and amazed at what he saw here, at what King Rufra had wrought. There were no slaves. There was no one who looked sick or underfed and the forgetting plague had barely touched this land. In places along the corridors water ran from the walls to collect in bowls and people drank from them, as if it were nothing—and he supposed it was nothing to them. The more he walked, and the further up the castle he went the more certain he felt that he must be heading in the wrong direction. When he had been given the contract he had given little thought to finding his target. But Maniyadoc was no longhouse or small keep; it was a true castle and large beyond his imagining. He stopped, thought, considered the target and where they were likely to be and knew what he should do. “Not up, Gadger,” he whispered to himself. “Of course not up.”
Down.
Down into the depths. Down into the dark places. Down into the hidden places. That was where he would find his target.
And so he headed down.
Steps, so many steps. More steps than he had ever imagined one building could have. The air became colder, the subtle weight of damp on his clothes grew and he became sure this was right. This was where his quarry would be.
He found himself in a gallery, a low-roofed and dark room held up by hundreds of columns, each one with cracked and chipped stone eyes staring at him. The end of the room hidden by a darkness the torches could not penetrate and he felt sure he had found the place. It simply felt right and when she had trained him, she had said, “Listen to what you feel and it will not often send you wrong.”
Knives sliding from sheaths.
He moved more quietly now, slipping off his shoes to aid his silence. Feeling the cold stone against his feet. He hugged the columns, finding darkness and sticking to it.
Did he see something? A flash of white in the corner of his eye?
What did she always say?
Be still, boy. Be still and listen before you act.
So he stilled and he listened.
Nothing.
He moved again. A shiver ran through him as cold and damp air wormed through his ill-fitting disguise.
Laughter.
Was it? Not certain. It sounded very far away, though it could have been someone very near laughing quietly. Or simply an echo from somewhere else in the castle? Surely it was an echo.
A flash of black and white. A skittering. A shuffle of soft shoes on hard stone.
Someone?
No.
A trick of the light. A confluence of shadows. Nothing else. No one knew he was here. No one had seen him. No one had followed him. He was good, the best of hers or she would not have sent him.
A subtle movement: a breath of air from the wrong direction.
A laugh.
This time the shiver that ran through him was not from the cold. Not from the damp. Someone was here. He took a deep breath.
I have nothing to fear.
I am a sword.
Some servant or guard, that was all. He could deal with them. Even if it was the target, he was whole and hearty and young, more than a match for any cripple—no matter how storied he was. He moved again, avoiding the light and he was sure he felt a movement in retu
rn, as if some other timed their moves to his. Was it his imagination?
Darkness punctuated by columns of unseeing eyes. Anyone would be unsettled by this place.
A chill runs through it.
A chill runs through him.
A dash. A whispering echo. And a corpse. A walking corpse. Skeletal face; flashes of arm and leg bone as it limps forward. It holds blades and approaches with a strange, inhuman and exaggerated grace.
No.
Breathe.
Not a corpse. A person.
A jester, that is all, a fool with knives in its hands and a fool who would have to die to ease his way. Death he could do. It was what he was for. It was what he did.
He attacked, blades drawn. A running thrust, a move to gut an unarmoured opponent.
But his opponent is not there. The jester has vanished and the air is filled with the strangest scent: of honey and herbs, at once beguiling and sickening, like corpse flowers in the thick woods of home.
A cut felt. Pain. The rattle of metal hitting stone as his knife falls from his hands. Blood fountains from where there had been fingers. He doesn’t scream, is too shocked to scream. The jester stands far across the room from him and he can see their blades are bloodied. But how?
“Where is the other half of your sorrowing?” The jester’s voice lacks any inflection; it speaks like a priest of the dead gods.
“What?” The pain building, searing, powerful. He will not cry.
“Who is he, Master?” This voice is not the jester’s. It comes from the darkness.
“Someone who wanted to hurt us, Feorwic.” The jester turns back to him. “Who did you come for?” Its voice is almost gentle now, beguiling.
“An assassin never gives up his secrets.” That had been drilled into him by her at training. The jester laughs.
“Everyone gives up their secrets eventually,” the jester said. And then the figure moves, a blur, a shadow across his vision, and arms are locked around his neck. He can smell the rancid smell of the panstick the jester wears to cover his face and it chokes him, like when he tries to eat rotten meat.
“Who are you here for?” is asked again, whispered into his ear and for the first time ever he thinks he understands evil. There is only darkness in that voice, no escape, no pity or mercy.
“An assassin never …”
And pain.
Pain like he has never known, the junctures of bone and joints being twisted in ways they were never meant to twist. The sharp edge of the blade digging through his skin and something else, something darker and older and more terrifying. Something that moves along the veins of his body and pours through his blood in a tide of razors. There was nothing like this in the school. It is nothing like the drownings, the brands, the beatings or the hunger. It is worse than anything he has ever imagined.
The voice again.
“Who were you here for?”
“No …”
A fire along his nerves. Like biting lizards chewing on the insides of his skin.
“It can only get worse for you, boy.” A voice like slime in his ears. “Who were you here for?”
And he cannot keep the words in. The pain is so large, so huge and overwhelming that the words have no room in his mind. They are forced out through the spittle and gasps that occupy his mouth.
“Merela Karn. I came for the traitor, Merela Karn.”
And the knife bites a little deeper and he relaxes, because the fear of death is not as powerful as the relief he feels at the sudden cessation of pain. As he fades away, life seeping into the ground, he hears voices speaking over him.
“You should not play with them, Master, it is cruel.”
“No, it is not, Feorwic.” The jester speaks gently, calmly, warmly. “They tell the truth more quickly when they are scared. It is a kindness really. And you are to call me Girton, not master. You know this.”
Out of the darkness steps a child, a young girl, dressed like a jester and with a dagger in her hand. She stares at him as his life leaves his body. “Yes, Master,” she says and the jester puts a hand on her shoulder. It is strange that a boy who has been raised in the harsh school of the Open Circle should immediately recognise that such a small movement is filled with love. There is a space then, a silence. He tries to imagine what it would have been like to feel another touch him for any reason other than to cause him pain. And as he dies, as all pain flees, he wonders who he is, this Girton, this jester whose voice seems full of care. His last sight is of her, the child, as the jester picks her up and they walk away.
He would have liked to have been loved the way she so clearly is.
He would have liked that.
Chapter 1
“Why do you paint your face and wear a silly hood?”
“Because I am Death’s Jester, child.”
“No, you are Girton.”
“I am Death’s Jester and Girton,” I said, taking down the hood.
Anareth screwed up her nose in confusion and I watched her gather up all the importance that a seven-year-old daughter of the king possessed.
“I think you are greedy. You should be either Girton or Death’s Jester. What if other people run out of people to be?”
“Well …”
“You should think on it, Girton Death’s Jester, before I have to make a royal command.”
With that she turned on her heel and stomped away, her blonde hair swinging like a pendulum while I tried not to laugh. Anareth was Rufra’s second child, named for his wife who had died soon after giving birth to her. She was a golden child, sweet-natured and clever, and her father doted on her—as all did in his court. Not only because she was clever and funny, but because we saw her mother in the girl, and her mother was missed by all.
We had camped in a clearing by a pool, and as I turned to follow her I caught sight of the reflection of the man I had become in the water. Not much to look at, not really. Short for a man of the Tired Lands as they fed me badly in the slave pens when I was a child. My body leaned subtly to the right, caused by years of favouring my club foot, which still pained me. I was not well-built either, like the Riders and the soldiers whom I was constantly among. Though this was not to say I was not strong but my strength was the acrobat’s strength, thin and wiry. “You are built for speed, like a lady’s racing dog.” That is how Aydor described me. I did not like dogs, but Aydor often forgot that.
Of course, I could not let anyone see my body, no matter how finely muscled it may be. The scars of the Landsman’s Leash covered it and it marked me for what I was, magic user; pariah. Even to show it among friends would see me taken to the Landsmen and bled into the ground. The Tired Lands had little pity for sorcerers and I had hoped, once, that my friend Rufra, on becoming king, may soften toward magic. But his hatred was as strong as any other’s, and so my secret remained just that, secret, and another stone went into the barrier that had gradually grown between us.
The reflection of my clothes, Death’s Jester’s black motley, created a hole in the water before me. I raised an arm, seeing the white material beneath the black, meant to give the illusion of bone. The bell on my hood rang gently as I pushed it back. My hair, long, brown and worn in a plait that reached to my waist, looked like a serpent moving lazily across my chest. A skull stared out of the water and back at me, bone-white face, black around the orbit of my eyes, around the jaw, under my cheekbones and over my neck and ears. I was more familiar with this face than I was my own, I only ever glimpsed that in the mornings in poor-quality mirrors and bad light while I put on the mask of Death’s Jester.
Voniss, Rufra’s new wife, said that everything about me—despite my shortness, which she loved to point out—spoke of confidence. That was why I was trusted and liked by Rufra’s soldiers, despite my strangeness and that they called me the King’s Cripple behind my back. Such words stung still, though I knew they were meant with a degree of affection. I could not see the confidence she spoke of in the figure in the water. I only saw the refl
ection of my master, Merela Karn, the greatest assassin I had ever known. I would only ever be her apprentice, never her replacement or equal. But I had found a place in life, and though it may not be what I had expected, or wanted, it was home and I was comfortable—or as comfortable as I was ever likely to be.
A scream filled the wooded clearing and I turned, hand going to the blade at my hip and immediately I felt foolish. The scream was only Anareth being taunted by her brother. He had taken her doll and was dancing it about just out of her reach. Doyl, the nurseman, stood by, wanting to help the little girl but wary of crossing the heir to Maniyadoc and I could not blame him, sometimes I thought Dark Ungar was in the boy.
“Vinwulf!” I shouted. “You are fifteen and should be above teasing children.” He stared at me, full of adolescent rebellion, then dropped the doll and walked away.
Vinwulf was Rufra’s son, named for the memory of the man who had raised, and in the end given his life for, the king. Sadly, there was nothing of Nywulf—a man I had respected if not loved—in the boy, no matter how much Rufra may have hoped the name may have brought some of the old man’s qualities with it.
Rufra and Areth’s first child had died young, victim to assassins, and when Vinwulf came along he had been coddled and spoilt in a way I had never agreed with. Though King Rufra was a good man, a great man in many ways, he remained blind to the faults of his children and would hear no criticism of them, no matter how much he was meant to trust who it came from.
Rufra and I had argued over today; where we were, what we travelled to do. The high kingship had become vacant after the forgetting plague had ravished the land and destroyed the family of High King Darsese. Rufra travelled to the capital of the Tired Lands to make his bid for the high kingship and bring his new ways to everyone. Maniyadoc was the largest province of the Tired Lands, but was not even a fifth of the area the high king ruled over—though I struggled to understand why Rufra could not be happy with what he had. The capital, Ceadoc, was a dangerous place for an adult, never mind a child, but he would not leave his children behind.
“Master?”
I turned. It was still strange to hear myself called master, despite that Feorwic had been with me for nearly two years now. She was small, like I had been, and of an age with Anareth. Her hair was almost pure white—though she had the rounded face and darker skin of the mountain people.