by Matthew Ward
Rosa swallowed a grimace. “No.”
“Modest too. I like you all the more. Let me set you free. Embrace me. You’ll not regret it.”
Embrace the Raven. A euphemism for bearing life’s burdens no longer. But his voice warned of a deeper meaning. One that set her shivering.
“You . . . You did this to me.”
“Not I.” Wounded innocence softened the words. “For years I’ve courted you. Watched you as your life slowed. And then my little sister stole away your soul. She thought she was helping. She has so much to learn.”
No. That couldn’t be. “My soul . . . belongs to Lumestra.”
He chuckled. “Lumestra is in no position to gainsay the stake. When the fires catch, you’ll go to the Evermoon.” He gestured at the moon, ghostly pale against the brilliant blue sky. “An eternity of repose beneath starlight, surrounded by the spirits of your ancestral enemies. I hope you enjoy poetry and contemplation, otherwise you’ll be terribly bored. And I promise that the light of Third Dawn will never find you. Not in Ashana’s halls. Better to bind yourself to one who appreciates your talents, eh?”
Weary beyond words, Rosa slumped against the mooring spikes. Why not indeed? Perhaps it was better to embrace the Raven than face eternity in Ashana’s service, like some shadowthorn drab who’d never known battle. If she was to be denied the glories of Third Dawn, did damnation’s form truly matter?
She met the Raven’s inky gaze.
The rope frayed and split. Sevaka fell forward against Horden’s arm. As she strove for balance, his dagger slit the last of the ropes. A hot, prickling rush swept through extremities too long denied. It felt good.
“Here.”
Horden thrust a canteen into her twitching hand. The contents spilled across parched lips. She spat a mouthful away, and gulped for more.
“Can you stand?”
“I can stand.” Hearing the tremor in her own voice, Sevaka clung tight to her pain, let it blossom to anger and hot-edged truth. “I can fight. But Rosa. We have to free Rosa.”
“Look at her! Even if we could get her loose, she’s away with the feylings!”
Sevaka snatched away his dagger and shoved him aside. Timber rocked under her feet as she stumbled towards the second gibbet. “Rosa! Rosa! Can you hear me?”
“Rosa! Rosa! Can you hear me? I’ll get you free. Just stay with me.”
Sevaka’s urgent cry flared like lightning through the murk of despair. Acceptance of the Raven’s offer faded into a croaking sigh.
Rosa stared at her through blurring vision. The world seemed distant, smeared beneath grease and molten tallow. Even the light seemed strange, tinged with greenish-white.
“Ignore her.” The Raven looked Sevaka up and down and tutted fussily. “She doesn’t understand. How could she? You’ve betrayed your friends, your comrades – even the memory of the man you loved. Can you really make that right? Why would you even want to make amends? We both know you haven’t the strength.”
He stared at her, head cocked. Somehow the question in his tone was not quite the same as the one he’d given voice.
Sevaka’s dagger parted the ropes about Rosa’s wrists. Her hands fell free.
The Raven extended a gloved hand. “You don’t belong here any longer. It’s time to leave.”
“Yes,” said Rosa. With the decision came peace. “It is.”
Horden’s cry of pain faded to a gurgle. Sevaka spun around, the dagger slipping free from the bonds about Rosa’s ankles. A lithe woman in Freemont uniform held the captain’s dying body at arm’s length.
Sevaka didn’t recognise the kernclaw at first, not without the cloak of feathers. But the poise, the self-assurance – those betrayed her. And the face. The face that was an older, darker mirror of her own . . .
The kernclaw let Horden’s body fall. It bounced a bloody smear down the outer face of the pyre and struck the brazier. Hot coals scattered across timber. Sap spat and crackled.
“Come with me.” The kernclaw’s grey eyes pleaded as she spoke. “I’ll beg our mother to spare you. She’ll listen, I swear it.”
She advanced as she spoke, timber rocking under her boots. Sevaka stared, transfixed by the face that was hers, and yet was not. Another of her mother’s secrets. “You don’t know her at all, do you?”
She drew closer. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you. We’re family.”
“I don’t have any family! Not any more!”
Sevaka lunged, her dagger flashing at the kernclaw’s eyes. It missed. Her balled fist did not. It struck the kernclaw’s jaw with a fleshy thud. Her head snapped aside, and she skidded back a pace across the logs.
The first flames licked up from below.
“Not so impressive without that cloak, are you?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” said the kernclaw. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
“I don’t give a damn what you want!”
Flames raced hungrily up the pyre. Sevaka’s boot sent a log skittering across the pyre. It smacked into the kernclaw’s leg and pinwheeled away. But even that small gesture left Sevaka’s legs leaden. The kernclaw was holding back. She had to be. As soon as that changed . . .
The kernclaw sprang through the greasy smoke. Timber bucking beneath her feet, she closed the distance in two graceful strides.
Sevaka swung. The kernclaw ducked beneath the dagger and rammed a fist into her gut. Sevaka retched desperately in the inky smoke. Her knees struck timber.
“Don’t make me do this.” The kernclaw’s breath washed warm over the nape of Sevaka’s neck. “I beg you.”
Smoke swirled up around the Raven, hiding Sevaka and the kernclaw from Rosa’s fading sight.
“Take my hand,” said the Raven.
“I’m not coming with you.”
“Ah. Then the Evermoon it is. The easy way out.”
Again that knowing smile. Rosa hated it.
“I’m not . . . going anywhere.” She gritted her teeth. There was another choice, beyond Ashana and beyond the Raven. And strange though it was, Rosa could have sworn he’d wanted her to see it. “My friend . . . needs me.”
Straining fingers found the gibbet’s upright. Heels dug against timber. Gathering her last strength, Rosa arched her back.
The mooring spikes in her torso turned to molten fire. It seeped through every torn fibre and every lesion, setting nerves wailing and muscles atremble.
Rosa screamed, and found strength in the sound. Metal scraped past bone. Flesh tore free. Every inch was a scarlet eternity. She closed her eyes, blotting out the Raven, the fire, the smoke. There was only the molten metal in her chest and the hope of redemption.
And beneath it all, the sound of gravelly laughter, and soft applause.
The scream was like nothing Sevaka had ever heard. It rose to a raw, jangling pitch and then was lost to the rush of flames. Rosa was gone. Choking down a sob, she rammed back her elbow. The kernclaw shifted her grip and the blow struck empty air. Vice-like fingers closed about Sevaka’s weapon-hand, striving for mastery of the blade.
Talons pressed against Sevaka’s throat. “Drop it! I won’t burn, not even for a sister.”
The kernclaw yelped. Her hand slipped from Sevaka’s wrist. A heartbeat later, the talons followed. Sevaka staggered away, legs buckling as she sought footing. Through stinging eyes, she stared back toward the gibbet.
A smoke-stained figure stood amid the leaping flames, soot streaked in her tangled blonde hair, and the edges of her ravaged clothes curling with smoke. She had one hand about the kernclaw’s throat. Another about her wrist. A mooring spike deep in her left shoulder confirmed the impossible.
“Rosa?”
Arms convulsed. The kernclaw vanished into the smoke with a thin cry. Rosa stepped through the rising flames and toppled. Sevaka caught her.
“It’s not fair.” Tears of sorrow and joy mingled on her cheeks. “It was my turn to save you.”
“I saved you?” Even with Rosa’s lips practically touch
ing her ear, Sevaka barely heard her reply. “You saved me first . . . Gave me something to fight for.”
She sagged. Sevaka held her tighter, as if to bind spirit to abused body. The smoke swirled. For a moment, Sevaka glimpsed the outline of a thin, dark man, tipping an imaginary hat in salute. Then the smoke shifted, and the vision was gone.
Gritting her teeth, Sevaka dragged Rosa away.
The shadow’s scream bled away. Viktor reknitted his scattered thoughts. Every inch, every scrap of his being, throbbed with pain beyond reckoning. As if he’d plunged into the heart of a forge and the depths of an ice-crested caldera all at once.
His body was a distant presence on the edge of perception. The muted greys of the shadow’s existence were all. Dark. Bleak. And afraid of the light.
Arrogance had all but unmade him. The same arrogance that had failed Anastacia. The same arrogance that had led him to believe he could end Ebigail Kiradin’s ambitions with a handful of willing blades.
To all things there was a limit.
The greys of the grove coalesced. A ring of shields, Josiri and Izack at their heart. Viktor felt Elzar at his side, one hand clutching a sword he did not know how to wield, his lips moving in silent prayer. Two tiny figures emerging from the blazing pyre, the one dragging the other. A lone rider galloped from the west. Infantry bore down from the east. And the golden light of the kraikons, relentless among the grey as they smashed Josiri’s shield ring to broken matchwood.
Tomorrow. He could learn his limitations tomorrow.
Viktor drove his shadow against the nearest kraikon. How plainly he saw it now. The kraikon’s light blazed almost as bright as Anastacia’s soul, and was not for him to tame. But there: gossamer strands of golden light, puppet strings twitching among the grey, and all of them tying back to a small, brilliant speck at the very heart of the grove.
With a rush of jubilation, Viktor hurled his shadow at the speck of golden light.
Heat flared beneath his shadow’s folds. But this time it was not the seething majesty of the sun, but the flicker of a candle flame. Like a candle flame he smothered it.
Cold rushed in. Too late, the puppeteer realised her danger. Her panicked cry rose to a terrified shriek, then shattered like glass.
The slap rocked Apara’s head back on her shoulders. Flesh burned raw by the heat of the pyre’s flames throbbed anew. She spat a mouthful of soot-black sputum onto the grass and glanced down, unable to meet her mother’s fury head on.
“Escaped? Can I trust you with nothing?” Lady Kiradin threw her hands to the sky. “Has anything ever failed me so completely as my own blood?”
Apara kept her eyes downcast. Much as she wished it otherwise, her mother was right. The failure seared her spirit as readily as the flames had seared her skin. “Horden is dead. As you commanded.”
“And Roslava Orova is free! My treacherous Sevaka is free!” She gestured around the circle of hearthguard. “I should adopt from the gutter. At least they’d have gratitude enough to display competence. Queen’s Ashes, but I . . .”
Her vitriolic splendour drowned beneath Tailinn’s desperate screech. The proctor released her control amulet as if burned and threw hands up to shield her face.
In the time it took Apara to catch her breath, Tailinn changed from a vibrant, rose-cheeked young woman to a corpse fished from the northern floes. Tears froze to icy droplets on her cheeks. Freckles vanished beneath a patina of impossible frost. Exposed flesh paled, cracks snapping across skin like a pane of glass beneath a mallet.
Something beneath the robes gave way with a tortured, squealing snap. An ankle. A knee. Perhaps a thigh. Apara leapt back as the body fell, a backwash of icy air brushing her feet as the lifeless remains shattered into a dozen pieces.
The kraikon ceased. Josiri, caught mid-flinch from a sword-blow he’d thought certain to take his head, stared up at the motionless construct in disbelief.
“I don’t believe it,” breathed Izack. “Praise Lumestra, but it’s a bloody miracle.”
Josiri glanced about. The remaining kraikons were every bit as immobilised; battered statuary looming large beneath alabaster trees. And beyond, advancing in the pyre-light, Ebigail’s loyal knights, coming to finish what the kraikons had begun.
“We’re not done yet.”
Izack laughed. “That lot? I’d take those preening Sartorovs alone after what we’ve just lived through.”
“Not alone,” croaked a familiar voice.
With Elzar’s assistance, Viktor groaned and clambered to one knee. Josiri hauled him the rest of the way upright. Izack was halfway right. A bloody miracle it was, but not of Lumestra’s doing. What would Izack say if he knew? What would any of them say?
“I thought you’d gone to the Raven,” said Josiri.
“Not yet.” Viktor stared across the grove, at the dancing flame of the pyre. Dark rings beneath his eyes spoke to flagging reserves. “One last bout. Then I can rest. Then we can all rest. Essamere! Until Death!”
“Until Death!”
Shields came forward to form a ragged line beneath the trees, their wielders bloody and wearied, but unbowed.
Josiri’s heart swelled. This was not the Republic he’d hated all his life. Across the grove, sheltering in a ring of Freemont hearthguard while good men and women died for her ambition? That was where his hate belonged, with Ebigail Kiradin and those like her. There were worse causes to die for, and worse comrades to die alongside.
The scarlet and blue line picked up speed. Josiri counted six hundred, at least. And every blade fresh for battle.
“Well,” he said softly. “At least we made a fight of it.”
Buccinas sounded. Boots thundered across the hilltop. Josiri’s fingers tightened about his sword. He wondered at Anastacia’s fate. If she’d understand why he’d died so far from home in a battle not his own.
A rider galloped out of the west, jolted around like a miller’s sack tied to the saddle more than a man sat upon it. Sawing on his reins, he skidded to a halt between the battle lines. Josiri at last saw that what he’d taken for one rider was actually two. A white-haired woman whose expensive dress offered stark contrast to her filthy appearance, and . . .
“Malachi?” Viktor’s consternation matched Josiri’s own.
Oblivious to the oncoming knights, Malachi swung from the saddle and helped his fellow rider down. At the very centre of the Sartorov front rank, a man in golden breastplate and blue velvet cloak silenced the buccinas with an agitated wave. The line stuttered and slowed. Not so the woman, who stalked onward with all the furious certainty of a serathi in a pit of sinners, fraying plaits bobbing behind her like serpents.
“Markos Koschai Rother,” she snapped, finger jabbing as mercilessly as any spear point. “Thirty years of marriage. Thirty years, I’ve abided your nonsense about honour! And now look how readily you throw it away! Your brother would be ashamed!”
“Adrias?”
Rother blanched, his face momentarily torn between chagrin and surprise. But only for a moment. Breaking ranks, he cast down his shield and threw his arms about his wife.
The Knights Sartorov lurched fully to a halt. The Knights Prydonis, riven by consternation, slowed also, their line breaking apart as individual knights fell out of step.
New hoof-beats brought more riders from the west, some in constabulary tabards, others in clothes as ragged as Lady Rother’s.
Viktor’s laughter rolled like thunder beneath the trees.
Lady Kiradin’s shoulders shook. Cold eyes blazed disbelievingly from a bloodless face. “What have they done?”
Apara tore her gaze from Tailinn’s frost-sheathed body and stared across the grove. Knights knelt before their foes, heads bowed in contrition. The battle, such as it had been, was done.
“The Parliament,” she said. “They have betrayed you.”
“Betrayed?” Lady Kiradin rounded, hands hooked to claws. “Betrayed?”
For a moment, Apara feared her mother meant to att
ack her, so mad was the gleam in her eyes. Then with shuddering breath Lady Kiradin drew herself in, her fingers working feverishly against one another.
“And you?” she snarled. “Where does your loyalty lie?”
Apara blinked away the question. “We can’t stay here, Mother. Your enemies will be coming. Please?” She held out a hand.
Rage slipped from Lady Kiradin’s expression. For the first time, she seemed old, her fire faded and her steel rusted. Her fingers closed around Apara’s and clasped them tight.
“Dear Apara. You were always my favourite.” She stared blindly across the grove. “Take me from this terrible place.”
Sixty-One
The gates of Freemont yawned wide beneath dusk’s ruddy wings. Kneeling hearthguard waited on the drive, heads bowed and hands clasped to the backs of their necks. Viktor scarcely spared them a glance and hobbled on. If he’d learned but one thing that day, it was that Captain Izack knew his business.
“She inside?” he asked.
Izack grunted. “Hard to be sure where the vranakin are involved. They come and go as they please.”
“And now they’ve gone. Lady Kiradin is on her own.”
“Look . . .” Izack broke off. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re fit to drop. Happy to handle this for you, no questions asked, if you follow?”
Viktor shook his head. “This is my responsibility.”
Izack nodded. “And this sorry lot?”
“Lock them up with the others. The Council will decide their fate.”
A darkened hallway beckoned. Firelight clawed fitfully beneath the sitting room door. Viktor pressed on beneath disapproving gazes of Kiradins long dead. His shadow, every bit as weary as he from the labours of the day, coiled restlessly about his soul.
The sitting room door fell open at the slightest touch. Ebigail Kiradin stood at the hearthside, a brimming brandy glass in her hand. Nary a hair on her greying head nor crease on her crimson dress was out of place.